Love’ em or loathe ‘em market calls and analyst surveys from the experts are always well received and subject of great discussion. That may be about to change as several prominent firms are close to agreeing to stop answering surveys on expectations. An agreement is coming together between the New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman and Wall Street firms whereby they will stop their practice of cooperating with analyst surveys administered by certain elite, technologically sophisticated clients.
Blackrock was the first to strike a deal back in January to give up the analyst gatherings and Schneiderman has welcomed the moves today;
“At my request, these firms have agreed to stop a practice that can offer an advantage to powerful clients at the expense of others. Our markets will only be fair and healthy if everyone plays by the same rules, which is why we will continue to take action against those who provide unfair advantages to elite traders at the expense of the rest of us. I applaud these firms for their leadership and cooperation.”
This is part of an investigation called “Insider Trading 2.0″
At the moment it’s the stock market that is facing the brunt of this and it is an elite number that have first and detailed access to the data, but that could spread further afield depending on how the investigations go. Quite a few private survey firms have exclusivity deals for paid subscribers such as the Reuters deal with Markit for PMI’s and the Chicago ISM PMI (which is out on Friday by the way).
While it seems like good news it doesn’t really affect us retail traders as we still have to battle the robots for the numbers as they are released, whether they are early or not. That said, anything that takes us to a more level playing field is good but how far reaching it ends up will be key. If it starts impacting things like forex orders then it may make life tougher for us retailers to garner the most simplest of market info. As always finding the balance will be key.