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[ T U R N O F T H E Y E A R | W H AT T O E X P E C T F R O M 2 0 1 8 ] Matthew McLoughlin, head of trading, Liontrust First month of the year will be a big one The optimist in me hopes that finding liquidity will not be an issue and that the LIS and sub-LIS execution venues will operate as predicted. I am fairly confident that after the first few weeks we will know where the liquidity is reverting to and hope that the fragmentation that has been rightly highlighted is not as bad as first thought. Within a couple of months conversation will switch from dark pool caps & liquidity to RTS 27 and RTS 28 and how the available data should be utilised. Then, dare I say it, on to MiFID III discussions. On a lighter note, pric- es of winter sun holiday will be low in January 2018, so get yourself a bargain if you are brave enough to leave the office during the first weeks of the new regulatory regime! Mark Hemsley, president, Cboe Europe The year of adjusting to a new equities market landscape As we move into 2018, it’s going to be all about understanding and adjusting to the new liquidity landscape in the equities market. With the double volume caps coming into effect and the broker crossing networks closing, that volume will need to find a new home and, in the short term, I see the lit markets as the beneficiaries of that flow. With many stocks capped out of the dark pools at the start of the year, I expect we will see a sharp uptick in trading in periodic auctions given this service provides pre- EMS/ OMS prices to cause a shock Sean Sullivan, chief revenue officer, LiquidityBook One of the underappreciated changes that MiFID II is ushering in is around EMS/OMS pricing, as brokers will no longer be able to pay transaction- ally on behalf of their buy-side clients since that will be considered an inducement. OMS’ have historically been very ‘sticky’ once installed for two reasons: first, replacing such a critical piece 76 TheTrade Winter 2017 trade transparency for the amount likely to trade in the auction and minimal market impact, similar to a dark pool. We’ve seen a big uptick in block trading in 2017 and I expect that will continue to accelerate into 2018 as buy-side firms continue to directly manage their order flow on block trading platforms. I think the landscape will continue to evolve over the course of the year and we’ll see systematic internalisers come into their own towards the end of the year as firms continue to assess these new venues. of software to the investment process is a big lift, and second, since the sell-side incurs many of the hidden costs associated with them, the buy-side might not have always known just how expensive they were. Now that that second factor will be removed, we think we’ll see quite a bit of churn in the space.