"For many years, investment banks and other electronic brokers have provided electronic order-routing mechanisms ... But once an order goes behind a firewall it's very difficult to maintain total control over it."

Adam Conn, head of trading at Barings Asset Management,

indicating that investors want more control and transparency over the trading process, fearing the post-crisis proliferation of opaque private markets and high-speed electronic traders has exposed them to new risks that can rack up costly losses, according to a Reuters report. Stock investors who recognize the risks of trading in anonymous "dark pools" but are unwilling to spurn them have found an alternative: club together. A growing number of European investment funds have signed up to use an electronic trading system designed by one of their own - Finland's Pohjola Asset Management - which offers the ability to dissect and control the way their market bets are routed to dark pools and other exchanges across the region. The data they generate is shared among the group, giving them strength in numbers but also leeway to change strategies.

"By fostering risk-taking and the search for yield, accommodative monetary policies thus continued to contribute to an environment of elevated asset price valuations and exceptionally subdued volatility."

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS),

saying that financial asset prices are at "elevated" levels and market volatility remains "exceptionally subdued" thanks to ultra-loose monetary policies being implemented by central banks around the world, Reuters reported. In its quarterly review, the BIS said financial market volatility spiked higher in August on the back of geopolitical concerns and worries over economic growth, but quickly returned to "exceptional lows" across most asset classes. The comments echoed the institution's warning earlier this year that rock-bottom interest rates had led to "worrying" signs of unsustainable growth in property and credit markets in some countries. The US Federal Reserve is on course to bring its bond-buying program to an end in October and is expected to begin raising interest rates next year. But if the Fed is stepping back, the European Central Bank (ECB) is stepping up. The ECB, which has cut key rates, will offer hundreds of billions of euros of liquidity to banks, and purchase hundreds of billions of euros of assets to try and ward off deflation and revive flagging growth.

"We have given a mandate to the commission and the EIB to swiftly present an initial report on practical measures that can be taken, on profitable investment projects that are justifiable."

Italy's Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan,

stating that EU finance ministers tasked the European Commission, the EU executive and the European Investment Bank (EIB) to draw up a list of projects that would create growth and then decide how to finance them, according to a report by Reuters. Ministers are expected to discuss the projects and investment tools at their next meeting in Luxembourg in October. There were no details of what those projects might be. To finance them, the ministers discussed a total of four ideas: an Italian paper on new financing tools for companies, a Franco-German proposal on how to boost private investments, a Polish proposal on creating a joint EU fund worth 700 billion euros ($907 billion) and a call from incoming European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for a 300 billion euro investment program to revive the struggling European economy.