Pragma, an independent trading boutique which develops trading algorithms and provides consulting and guidance for buy-side firms, has developed a quantitative model and supporting smart-routing system for passive limit orders that it says significantly improves all-in performance.

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They paid tens of billions of dollars in management fees, consulting fees, performance fees and trading costs.

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In 2005 Lankford ditched a comfortable salary, hired away an engineer from Reuters and went hunting for consulting gigs optimizing speed performance for trading firms and hardware vendors.

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"This unlevels the playing field and gives certain traders advantages over others, " says Sharon Brown-Hruska, former acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and an economist at nera Economic Consulting.

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Amit Ghate is a mechanical engineer who, after 10 years of consulting practice, decided to transition to a career in stock trading.

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Rajaratnam led what has been described as the largest insider trading ring ever, building a network of high-ranking experts in key technology and consulting firms.

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One forecaster, the Boston consulting firm Tabb Group, predicts that the NYSE will see its share of the trading volume in NYSE-listed stocks fall from 40% this year to 32% by 2010.

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Accenture shares are trading modestly lower Monday morning after Bernstein Research analyst Rod Bourgeois cut his rating on the IT consulting firm to Market Perform from Outperform in what it basically a pure valuation call.

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According to an analysis performed by advanced analytics consulting firm Emerald Logic, factoring in WiseWindow data on top of a simple momentum trading program boosted returns by over 30% on an annualized basis for GM, Ford, and Southwest Airlines.

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