TT Connects with Brendan Mulvany, Head of Trading at Bowmoor Capital
Transaction cost analysis (TCA) is well established in equity and fixed income markets. Following TT’s acquisition of Abel Noser Solutions in 2023, a big part of our data and analytics strategy has been to bring TCA to other asset classes, including futures. In April of this year, Bowmoor Capital was among the first clients to deploy TT Futures TCA to inform their trade execution and algorithmic trading strategies and ensure they are achieving best execution. I recently spoke with Brendan Mulvany, Head of Trading at Bowmoor Capital, about his career in futures trading and the value of TCA.
How did you start out in futures trading?
My career in financial markets spans over 35 years, with a deep focus on futures and options trading. I began my journey in the late 1980s at Bank of America’s Futures and Options division in London, initially working as a broker and floor trader on the LIFFE exchange. I later transitioned to the bank’s dealing room, where I spent several years broking and trading fixed income instruments.
After leaving Bank of America, I moved to Chicago for six months to study at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), participating in a range of programs focused on trading and technical analysis. Upon returning to London, I became a local on the LIFFE exchange, trading in the German Bund pit.
Following my time on the floor, I continued trading my own account while also building and managing trading teams with diverse strategies. I held leadership roles at KYTE Futures, Refco, Marex and G.H.Financials, where I focused on developing talent and refining trading methodologies. Throughout my career, I’ve remained dedicated to the art and discipline of trading, with a particular emphasis on futures markets and technical approaches.
How does Bowmoor Capital approach trading?
Bowmoor Capital is a quantitative investment firm specializing in systematic trading strategies. Our flagship program, Global Alpha, is a long/short, trend-following strategy designed to capitalize on price movements across global markets.
We employ advanced mathematical models and data-driven processes to identify and exploit directional trends, investing in a diversified portfolio of exchange-traded futures. Our approach is entirely systematic, aiming to remove emotion from decision-making and ensure consistency across market cycles.
Global Alpha is built on the principle of broad diversification, targeting uncorrelated opportunities across a wide range of asset classes. These include equities, interest rates, currencies, metals, energy, grains, soft commodities and livestock—spanning every major sector of the global economy.
What is the biggest change that you have seen in the market during your career?
The majority of my trading career has involved trading my own money. Initially I started pit trading and then moved on screen as electronic trading took hold. The key change I have seen over my career has been that timeframes of a trade have gone from being intraday, when I was in the pits, down to milliseconds, when I worked in high-frequency trading.
Our timeframe at Bowmoor today is longer term. We hold trades from a minimum of around a week and up to a year. This changes your focus from making money today to doing so over a quarter and ultimately for the year. So that does alter how you trade and approach the markets.
But what does not change, whether you are trading in milliseconds or over a longer time horizon, is the need for best execution. You are always looking for the best price when you enter and exit a trade.
How has your use of data and analytics tools evolved in recent years?
Trade execution is constantly evolving. With the rise of computing power and widespread internet access, we’ve progressed from automated systems to algorithmic and high-frequency trading, and now to AI and machine learning—each requiring increasingly sophisticated data analysis.
At Bowmoor Capital, maintaining clean, high-quality trade data is a top priority. It’s essential not only for analyzing and improving our trading systems, but also for understanding execution quality and market impact—all within the framework of regulatory compliance.
Over the past two years, Bowmoor has grown from managing $10 million to over $100 million, and with that growth, the scale and complexity of our trades have evolved. As a firm rooted in trading discipline, best execution remains central to our operations.
For those of us with a background on the trading floor, seeking the best price is second nature. We continuously evaluate and implement tools that enhance execution quality and support our edge in the market.
You were among the first to adopt TT Futures TCA. What drove that decision?
Over the years, I’ve worked with a variety of trading software providers, and I still remember when Trading Technologies launched the vertical ladder interface. It was immediately clear that this was a platform built by traders, for traders—not just a charting tool or news service with trading functionality bolted on.
When I came across TT Futures TCA last year, I knew it was something we’d need as Bowmoor continued to grow. As our trading volumes increased, so did the need to analyze our execution data in greater detail and benchmark our performance against industry peers.
That conviction was reinforced at TradeTech in Paris earlier this year. While the conference primarily focuses on equities and fixed income, it was evident how central TCA has become to both trade decision-making and regulatory compliance in those markets.
Now, with the rapid integration of AI and machine learning into trading workflows, the importance of having clean, structured data—and the right tools to analyze it—has become even more critical. For us, it’s a no-brainer: to stay competitive and compliant, we need both the data and the infrastructure to extract actionable insights from it.
How does TCA for futures differ from other asset classes?
A key difference between futures and, say, equities is in the way that futures prices are calculated. For example, futures trade in tick sizes, which adds additional complexity to TCA calculations and means that you have to take a different approach in how you evaluate best price in futures.
What impact has TT Futures TCA had on your trading strategies?
TCA is playing a key role in refining our algorithmic trading decisions—helping us determine which execution strategies to deploy, when to use them and how aggressive to be in different market conditions.
By providing deeper insights into execution quality and market impact, TCA is driving greater automation and efficiency across our trading operations. It also strengthens our best execution reporting, ensuring we meet regulatory standards with transparency and precision.
Ultimately, this leads to better performance and improved returns as we continue to optimize every aspect of our trading process.
What’s next for Bowmoor Capital?
Our primary focus moving forward is to continue strengthening our position in the trend following space by refining our strategies, maintaining a disciplined investment process and leveraging data and technology to stay ahead in an increasingly competitive landscape.
One of our key objectives over the next few years is to grow AUM to our target of $1 billion. We see significant opportunities to expand our investor base, both domestically and internationally, and to deepen relationships with institutional allocators who are seeking uncorrelated, systematic strategies.
We’re excited about the road ahead and the potential to create value for our clients and investors while continuing to evolve within the ever-changing market environment.
To learn more about our multi-asset TCA solutions, contact us by completing our online inquiry form.