Hard work and innovation are necessary to differentiate execution.
Traders Magazine spoke with Jason Lenzo, Managing Director, Head of Trading at Russell Investments, who was nominated for Excellence in Trading: Multi-Asset at Markets Media Group’s 2023 Markets Choice Awards.
Briefly describe your background and career to date.
Jason Lenzo, Russell Investments
I currently serve as Managing Director, Head of Trading for Russell Investments Implementation Services, which involves managing global equity, fixed income, FX and derivative trading activity for the firm’s funds and third-party clients, as well as Execution Services, Agency FX and Commission Management. Prior to this role, I was Director, Equity, Fixed Income and FX Trading for Implementation Services, as well as Execution Services and Commission Management. My duties encompassed the implementation and execution of trading strategies that best fit a client’s investment objectives. I joined Russell Investments in 1997 as an assistant trader, aiding the traders in executing client trades and handling the day-to-day operations. I’ve been challenged throughout my career at Russell Investments with automation and refining the daily trading process and involved in implementing several single stock and portfolio platforms, as well as the supporting infrastructure.
I’ve been fortunate to work with excellent leaders and teammates over the years, coupled with the timing luck of the industry going through a massive transformation from the late ’90s with new trading venues, platforms and technologies completely changing the norms. Such changes have created opportunities, and we’ve always embraced the hard work and innovation that’s required to be successful during change and differentiate execution.
Please tell us about Russell Investments’ trading desk and your current initiatives.
At Russell Investments, our 24-hour global trading desk accesses over 100 countries globally and covers all asset classes, including equity securities, fixed income securities, foreign exchange, listed derivatives and OTC products. We have 15-plus years of experience and approximately $2.5 trillion traded annually through our multi-venue institutional platform.
What trends do you see around buy-side trading?
Execution and trading technology continue to evolve to make markets seemingly more accessible and bring market participants together. Simultaneously, the market ecosystem is becoming more homogeneous with less resiliency and fewer differing views. Another key trend on our radar is the ability to access risk markets and prices.
How do you innovate, streamline and advance electronic trading at Russell Investments?
We spend a lot of time evaluating offerings in the market, observing a lot of creative and innovative firms looking to make markets better and more efficient. We want to have a pulse on those enhancements and efficiencies in order to then overlay them with the impact they would have were we to implement them well.
Is there anything out there that market participants are not paying enough attention to? Or that they’re paying too much attention to?
Ironically, the technology of trading and the use or implementation of that technology is often more the focus than the actual markets themselves. Both need to be well understood.
How are innovative technologies shifting behaviors within capital markets?
We are seeing similar risk taking that has historically been in the domain of humans moving to automation, which can be beneficial in some instances. However, this means that the humans are having less of a real-world experience with regard to evaluating ongoing and real risk.
