Tom Steinert-Threlkeld

The spike in market activity and volatility spurred by the downgrade of U.S. debt, the debt-ceiling contratemps in Congress and the European sovereign debt overhang did not drive overall trading volume to record levels in August.

IBM agreed to acquire risk analytics firm Algorithmics for an estimated $387 million. Its risk analytics software, content and advisory services are used by banking, investment and insurance businesses to help assess risk, address regulatory requirements and assist decision-making.

A bad day for financial engineers in Chicago continued Wednesday, when the Securities and Exchange Commission said the assets of a quantitative trading firm were frozen.

The assets held in mutual funds fell $219.2 billion in July -- before the announcement that Standard & Poor’s had cut its rating of U.S. debt for the first time ever.

The greatest thing President Obama could do on the eve that commemorates the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is to set a date certain in this calendar year for the withdrawal of U.S. and allied armed forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Let’s now concentrate on making our economy healthy. And, as that happens, we can again help other economies get healthy as well.

The New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq Stock Market, Direct Edge and BATS Global Markets said they will open for business at 9:30 a.m. Monday, for normal operations.

Hurricane Irene is expected to make landfall Saturday in coastal North Carolina and hit the turf that houses the data centers that make up Wall Street on Sunday.

Slightly more than $1 billion flowed back into mutual funds that invest in U.S. stocks long-term, in the week ended Aug. 17.

A flurry of law firms late Tuesday said that a class action had been started against clearer Penson Worldwide, over "materially false and misleading statements" about the Dallas firm's financial condition.

On Tuesday, UBS announced plans to cut 3,500 job worldwide, to save $2.5 billion by 2013. Almost simultaneously, the state of Connecticut found that money talks -- if it wants to keep UBS jobs in its state.

You can find prices anywhere, from a trading turret to Yahoo! Finance to a finance yahoo. You can find prices anywhere, from a trading turret to Yahoo! Finance to a finance yahoo. But if you want to go to see who’s winning market share among trading venues, here are the websites you need to visit.

The website of the Morningstar firm went down for an undisclosed period Tuesday, the same afternoon an earthquake rattled the East Coast from a site near Mineral, Virginia.

The most highly attacked operating system in mobile computing is Android, from Google, according to a security technology unit of chipmaker Intel.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the creation of an interim inspection program related to audits of brokers and dealers.

SS&C Technologies Holdings said it agreed to acquire an Irish supplier of administrative services for investment funds.

The downgrade of U.S. debt may have led to more market volatility than the Flash Crash. That’s the initial result of comparing the average daily volume of stock trading in August 2011 to the volume in May 2010, when stocks fell nearly 1,000 points at one point in a single day of trading.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said it suspended an Illinois broker for 16 months for manipulating trades using spoofing and other tactics.

From minding procedure to the minds of digital criminals, here is a diverse collection of books to pick from. Kick back with (and learn from) one, wherever you are under the sun.

More than $40 billion flowed out of all forms of mutual funds in the week that featured the first-ever downgrade of U.S. debt.

Exchanges around the world should discourage market participants from gcreating excessive low-qualityh messages that can clog trading networks, two trade groups representing automated trading firms said this week.