Insights

The current workflow with so many “jumps” between platforms adds unnecessary complexity to an asset class which is already fragmented. We’re seeing more and more buy-side firms looking for solutions to consolidate available liquidity in one screen and to boost capacity to automate.

With the hiring of data scientists, advances in cloud computing, and access to open source frameworks for training machine learning models, AI is transforming the trading desk. Already the largest banks have rolled out self-learning algorithms for equities trading.  

Banks and asset managers relied on global teams to backup and transfer workloads during the pandemic. But, in moments of crisis, exposure to operational risks, model risks, cybersecurity attacks, and fraud can increase exponentially.

Vishal Pandya, chief operating officer of FlexTrade Systems, outlines how the firm’s swift response to the global pandemic has made it business (almost) as usual for their clients. Actions speak louder than words. If there is any silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it would be that uncertainty and volatility reveals truth about how financial …

Intraday volatility is a substantially more important metric in this new regime. As the global health and economic situation evolves, more sudden shifts in overall volatility are likely, and historic volatility metrics will be slow to respond to such events.

Given the market’s resiliency and traders working from home during the COVID-19-fueled volatility, some market observers have questioned the centralized trading desk mentality that has been pervasive on Wall Street.

In volatile markets, asst managers were monitoring portfolios in real-time to determine how factors were behaving and affecting risks in their portfolios.

Options trading volumes and volatility skyrocketed in March as concerns over the COVID-19 virus spread across markets. In this Q&A, FlexTrade’s Vice President Equity Derivatives Rob Brogan examines the shift to electronic trading, the need for real-time tools for calculating the Greeks, and how FlexTrade supports the demand for ‘volatility trading’ in a fast-moving market.

With attention riveted on volatile stock and bond markets and the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, brokers and asset managers are focused on keeping up with the high volumes of market data and trades. With so many unknowns, the situation could impact market data reforms to overhaul the securities information processor or SIP.

At times like these, two major factors come into play:  first, your trading technology’s ability to process and manage the data coming into the platform, and secondly, how well-established automation is within the firm.