The Americas Conference 2014 – the weather outside is frightful.

The 10^th Americas FIX Trading Conference held in New York on 13^th February was marked by yet another severe snowstorm in Manhattan. The weather was no match for the FIX Trading Community though, who turned out in good numbers to listen to the presentations and participate in the interactive roundtables which provided healthy debate and the opportunity to network.
Both business and technical leaders were very much in evidence as panellists discussed developments in execution venue analysis, what are the priorities for both Buy and Sell Side in 2014 and the buy vs build argument for vendors to address.
In the afternoon, two streams allowed the technicians to hear presentations on the next generation of FIX and specifics on FIX certification and client-onboarding whilst the business stream focused on post trade issues and the new market structure for derivatives, timely given the mandatory electronic trading for certain swaps on 15^th February.
The day concluded with a presentation on the theme of making markets safer. It was a good way to finish the conference as the word that seemed to be most in use over the day was ‘transparency’. Whether it was execution venue analysis, TCA, IOIs, post trade, fixed income, REG SCI or algos the need for greater transparency was alluded to many times. Expect that to be the case for some time to come.