Trade Talk Blog: Trade Execution

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The following is a guest post by Christopher Rodriguez, chief marketing and relationship management officer of Eris Exchange, and Geoffrey Sharp, Eris’ managing director and head of sales. Eris is a U.S. futures exchange that offers listed interest rate swap futures. Trading Technologies offers connectivity to Eris through both the TT® and X_TRADER® platforms.

Some traders were more prepared than others for the results of the U.S. presidential election in November. Higher implied volatility, changes in risk premium and increases in interest rates resulted from Donald Trump’s surprise victory. Equity markets plunged then rallied. All told, the month of November was remarkable for traders.

Heading into Thanksgiving, 10-year Treasury Note Yields reached highs not seen since the middle of 2015. The bond sell-off tapered toward month-end, but the forwards predicted a more aggressively rising rate environment. Continue Reading →

The following is a guest post authored by Geoffrey Parker. He is a professor of engineering at Dartmouth College and a visiting scholar and research fellow at the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy. Before joining academia, he held positions in engineering and finance at General Electric. He has made significant contributions to the economics of network effects as co-developer of the theory of two-sided networks. He received his BS from Princeton and his MS and PhD from MIT. You can follow Geoff on Twitter at @g2parker.

Given the dramatic change now underway in financial markets and exchanges, it’s tempting to believe that the industry is in uncharted territory. And, as we’ll see below, there is some truth to this view. However, it’s worth remembering that the industry went through a similar phase of change when exchanges such as the CME became electronic instead of physical markets. Floor traders gave way to traders sitting at computer terminals and, increasingly, to algorithmic trading machines. Electronic completion offered a number of immediate advantages that included better price discovery, improved access to markets and a better ability to create customized products that better fit needs. For example, firms that wished to smooth the value of assets such as power plants or pipelines against commodity price volatility were able to tailor their hedging strategies to their exact needs.

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Thomas Price, Director FEX Global

FEX Global Pty. Limited (FEX) has contracted with Trading Technologies to provide the exchange’s trading participants with the TT trading platform. The following is a guest post authored by Thomas Price, Director of Financial and Energy Exchange Ltd, the parent company of FEX Global

Over the next decade, the global derivatives world is going to further shift on its axis toward the Asia/Pacific region. This volume and participation migration will present both immense opportunities and challenges to European and American derivatives exchanges.

Global derivatives trading infrastructure has centered primarily on Western platforms and exchanges since the 1970s. When the industry and participants think of iconic exchanges, products and brands, thoughts turn to the likes of the CME, ICE, Nasdaq, CBOE and Eurex. While these infrastructures and brands will remain incredibly powerful, they, and indeed large parts of the derivatives industry, will be more dependent on revenues emanating from Asian markets.

China, now the world’s second biggest economy, is leading the reorientation. As a centralized economy, people take notice when the Chinese government speaks, and the Beijing officials have indeed spoken. The current administration has publicly stated their ambition to further participate in the global derivatives industry.

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TT was once again down in Florida to gain key insights from some of the industry’s leading minds at the 41st Annual FIA Conference in Boca Raton. We had the opportunity to meet with the media, partners and customers to talk about how we’ve changed in the past year. Here’s a recap of the eventful week:

Things kicked off with a new initiative on Tuesday, March 15: the inaugural TT/FIA tennis tournament, benefiting Futures For Kids. We were pleased to have a strong turnout, and it was a fun and fit way to meet new people and catch up with longtime industry friends.

The heart of the Boca program began on Wednesday with panels on topics impacting the industry. The Exchange Leaders panel was a big draw, featuring the CEOs of Deutsche Borse, CME Group, ICE, SGX and Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing. The key takeaway was that these exchange groups — each one of them — are looking to technology to drive innovation and their organizations’ futures.

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Amidst the rapidly unfolding story happening in and around Trading Technologies, Autospreader, a tool invented by TT over a decade ago for executing the industry’s defining trading algorithm, has been quietly going through a major overhaul.

Regardless of the products being traded or the strategy being deployed, execution speed is critical to successfully trading synthetic spreads. With this in mind, we took all of our accumulated knowledge and expertise and rebuilt Autospreader from scratch, leveraging best-in-class colocation facilities; a streamlined, consolidated, modular code base; cutting-edge networking technologies and real-time performance monitoring. The result is a synthetic spreading engine that is twice as fast as anything we’ve ever released—with the flexibility to execute in ways never possible before.

When we say things like “modular code base” and “flexible architecture,” we’re not just throwing out buzzwords. We’ve built Autospreader to allow the user to override the default spreading logic at critical decision points. In the past, service providers like Trading Technologies would deliver tools with a list of features. Users could mix, match and tweak how they use those features, but they were always confined to the capabilities built into the product.

The introduction of Autospreader Rules in the new TT platform gives users the ability to build their own custom Autospreader features. The days of take it or leave it software development are gone. More than ever, we at Trading Technologies want to empower our users to engage with us in a partnership to help us deliver the tools they need to run their businesses. We recognize that we can’t always give every trader exactly what they want all the time. By making Autospreader customizable, we’re not trying to create more work for our customers—in fact Autospreader will come with a longer list of features than ever before. Rather, we’re trying to give users the ability to easily take control if they want to do so.
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