[ T R A D E T E C H
are thinking about the future, and
not just preserving the way things
are, will be the people that I want to
work with.”
O’Brien’s comments were echoed
by Griffin Frank, a next generation
trading analyst at Vanguard, who
highlighted that the changing re-
quirements of a large asset manag-
er require a vendor or technology
provider than can adapt, especially
as “implementation costs are
astronomical and it’s going to take
months, if not years.”
“Flexibility is also one of the
to provide for you and then you
need to think if you can build that
in-house. That could be a massive
business opportunity that you are
missing out on,” Frank said.
However, Frank also highlight-
ed a caveat to greater flexibility,
stating that firms should be wary
of vendors providing “vapourware”
– technology that is still in the
concept phase or the early stages
of development: “Anytime I hear
‘We can do that’, that doesn’t mean
‘We do that’. The system you are
getting, which you may be halfway
F X
U S
2 0 1 9 ]
for implemented systems.
In an ideal world where tech-
nology budgets were not an issue,
Vanguard’s Frank detailed that he
would look to acquire a technology
infrastructure that provided a view
into “everything that is impacting
the investment decision.”
“You want full control. Depend-
ing on the size of the pockets
you’re trading, you probably could
get something like that, but I
think that is a pipe dream as far
as I am concerned. The amount of
money that it would take us to fully
rebuild our technology so that we
have that would be astronomical
and I don’t know that we could get
the return on that,” he commented.
Eaton Vance’s O’Brien opined
that he would seek to automate as
many manual, low-value-add tasks
as possible, to reduce the possibili-
ty of errors in repetitive tasks and,
more importantly, make sure that
traders are spending time on the
most valuable work.
However, referring to an earlier
point made by Frank, O’Brien
cautioned that the evolutionary
“There are definitely
specific vendors in FX
that won’t exist in their
current form several
years down the line.”
MIKE O’BRIEN, EATON VANCE
challenges with the larger technol-
ogy providers, because they don’t
need to be flexible. They are going
to listen to 80-90% of people and
if they say that’s what they want,
that’s what they are going to build.
It might be something very specific
to your business, something very
niche, that they are not going
done implementing, may not do
the real thing you need it to do.”
Wish list
Technology cost has become a huge
factor for trading desks, especially
for the head of the desk, who must
take responsibility for increased
spend and return on investments
nature of technology-led trading
means forward planning is often a
tricky issue: “It is a never-ending
problem; technology is going to
change, market structure is going
to change, and just because some-
thing works today doesn’t mean it’s
going to be the best method in the
future,” he said.
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