things are a-changing... Hotspot got acquired by Knight a couple weeks back... they are considering publishing time & sales info same as CME... now EBS acquired by Icap... time to take a second look at ETC methinks... any thoughts anybody?
Interesting stuff, thanks. No deep thoughts... other than noting that investors are apparently loving this news. ICAP's shares (ICAP.L) surged over 10% on the news, despite the dilution. Currently up nearly 50p to 526+ from yesterday's close at 477.25, and were as high as 539.50 today. Also up about 100% over the last year. There's a more detailed press release on ICAP website, if anyone's interested. One set of numbers that struck me was that EBS had operating profit of $37M on revenue of $206M in 2005 (revenue up 10% from 2004). Now, EBS processed around $33.8 trillion in spot forex transactions last year ($130B x 260 days). That's ignoring their gold, silver, etc. flows, a small fraction by $ value... but, hey, give it a bit more time, what with those parabolic rises resuming any day now. So, their top line is 0.000006 = 0.0006% of that forex flow figure, while their bottom line is 0.000001 = 0.0001%. Painfully obvious conclusion: if you can grab a ridiculously tiny slice -- 1/100th of a pip, so to speak -- of a huge, second-by-second, perpetual business -- say, ~6% of the global spot forex pie -- you get to be a nearly Billion-dollar company in your own right.