Blogs

Experts on a recent webinar said that hedge funds and other buy-side trading desks are coping with faster reactions and market reversals in response to data releases and earnings sentiment.

One of the major themes for 2023 is the emphasis on multi-asset trading and the focus on efficiency and scalability across regions and countries. In the past, a trader focused on a single asset class such as equities or bonds, whereas today with the migration to electronic trading, the desk can automate workflows and manage executions across all asset classes.

What are the top market structure issues for sell-side firms in 2023? With the new year off to a fast start, brokerage firms are facing a variety of evolving issues that could impact their trading businesses. On the horizon are proposed regulations to reform U.S. equity trading, increased best execution obligations, innovations in ATSs, 24-hour trading, and shortening the settlement cycle to T+1.

As we look back on this year, topics such as institutional adoption of digital asset trading, European trading in response to geopolitical risk, and the SEC’s plans to revamp U.S. stock trading rules dominated the headlines. In 2022, we covered those topics and much more including the growing sophistication of AlgoWheel, and the evolution of the buy-side fixed income EMS.

At the Security Traders Association (STA) 89th Annual National Market Structure Conference held in Washington DC in October, brokerage executives reacted to the concept of auctions as well as other ideas on SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s agenda to revamp equity market structure. But the industry’s top wholesalers and brokerage executives speaking at STA emphasized that the stock market is functioning well for retail investors and cautioned against making a litany of changes that could lead to worse results.

A key innovation is the ability to dynamically switch between algos and/or tweak algo parameters based on the current market conditions and algo performance. The concept of algo switching is not new; however, since FlexAlgoWheel focuses on order routing, we offer dynamic switching as an integral feature. Dynamic re-evaluation, an advanced feature of FlexAlgoWheel, continues to assess the real-time market conditions.

In the past, European traders increased their allocation to algorithmic/direct market access (DMA) while reducing high-touch trading. This year, the biggest increase was seen in program trading by about 34%.

A key innovation is the ability to dynamically switch between algos and/or tweak algo parameters based on the current market conditions and algo performance. The concept of algo switching is not new; however, since FlexAlgoWheel focuses on order routing, we offer dynamic switching as an integral feature. Dynamic re-evaluation, an advanced feature of FlexAlgoWheel, continues to assess the real-time market conditions.

One of the biggest possible reforms would be a requirement for retail brokers to route individual orders to buy or sell stocks into a transparent “auction process” for matching customer orders, rather than sending them to wholesale market makers for execution on off-exchange platforms.

Panelists agreed on the need to capture and monitor tradeable streams as a precondition for calculating liquidity analytics, emphasizing this helps them understanding which LPs are performing better than others.