ION, which provides trading, analytics, treasury and risk management solutions for capital markets, commodities and treasury management, has developed technology to help heads of execution cut costs through the discovery and advertisement of liquidity.
The new trading solution – Fidessa Spotlight – seeks a wide range of liquidity by combining dark pools with traditional benchmark algorithms and order handling worldwide.
Fidessa Spotlight offers traders access to dark volume while maintaining order across other third-party algos and allows chief information officers (CIOs) and chief technology officers (CTOs) to unlock contingent volumes while maintaining cycle or spray orders on lit, dark, and conditional venues.
Traders can also shape and modify the model using static data changes to control slice release finely across venues worldwide.
All good news for traders amid a slowdown in equities trading and capital raising, which has dragged on firms worldwide.
Sandeep Sabnani, head of equities product strategy and growth at ION Markets, said that Fidessa Spotlight means traders can seek and advertise liquidity across multiple markets and services, which in turn increases the volume available and improves best execution.
The new solution comes at a time when heads of equity desks face a number of challenges, including hunting liquidity from scarce and fragmented sources, reduced commissions, constrained budgets and regulatory changes. These evolving regulatory obligations include MiFID and CAT.
“The MiFID II review is currently underway with the co-legislators – the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union – each having published their positions, meaning fresh compliance and regulation for firms to take on board,” Sabnani told BEST EXECUTION.
Elsewhere, the UK regulator is also reviewing its rule book. “This review will likely end in further changes to the regulatory solutions developed over the past few years and will impact any firm operating in the Europe and the UK,” Sabnani said.
As a result of these headwinds, “heads of equity desks are increasingly seeking providers who can provide better liquidity for stocks and access to dark and conditional pool liquidity”, Sabnani added. “They need technology that can improve their understanding of the performance of their algos – ultimately, they need technology that will address the growing demands of their clients.”
Despite money being more expensive these days, Sabnani thinks that in times like these, “the best industries and companies are born” thanks to a shift in focus towards value creation and profitability which drives equity markets.
“We can expect the slowdown in equities trading and capital raising to begin to abate from companies in growth markets over the next two to three years, such as in Thailand, Indonesia and India, for example, where there is a high growth upside.”
©Markets Media Europe 2023
