PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - William O'Brien TI - Best Execution and the Institutional Investor DP - 2002 Mar 20 TA - Trading PG - 26--29 VI - 2002 IP - 1 4099 - http://guides.pm-research.com/content/2002/1/26.short 4100 - http://guides.pm-research.com/content/2002/1/26.full AB - Institutional investors have seen their world turned upside-down with recent changes. Decimalization, increased competition, and regulatory changes are impacting the buy-side firm's efforts to achieve best execution at a rapid rate. Best execution analysis is not exclusively transaction-related, as the processes for making a trade and making an investment decision are both critical to portfolio performance. To create an optimal trade management strategy, institutional investors need to understand the effects of recent and pending market structure changes with respect to not only their own businesses, but also the brokers, exchanges, and electronic systems they use to invest and trade.