[ T R A D E T E C H
DATA WILL BE KEY
DIFFERENTIATOR
FOR FX PLATFORMS
AMID CONSOLIDATION
CONCERNS
INTELLIGENT USE AND PROVISION OF DATA SETS TO
BUY-SIDE CLIENTS WILL BE A DEFINING FACTOR FOR
FX TRADING VENUES GOING FORWARD.
T
he intense competition for
FX trading venues may come
down to the quality and use of data
as a key differentiator.
The FX market has witnessed a
significant proliferation of trading
venues coming to market over the
course of the last several years,
with expectations of major consoli-
dation soon to come. However,
the use of data will be instrumental
going forward to build and opti-
mise a diverse liquidity network.
“Empirically there are a growing
number of venues and every year
it has grown. The reason for this
is that the light regulation in FX
means it’s a low barrier to entry
and that we cannot predict what
new ideas people will have,” said
James Sinclair, executive director
at MarketFactory.
Within such a crowded market-
place with low barriers to entry,
competition among venues is fierce
and innovation is required to stand
apart to attract buy-side clients.
“One thing that should be very
clear is the innovation that is
happening in data science right
F X
U S
2 0 1 9 ]
now is not that you are going to get
a new type of PDF or graph from
your vendor or liquidity provider
that is going to make you smarter,”
commented Andrew Ralich, CEO
of technology provider, OneZero.
“The venues stepping up to
provide data in the same ways that
liquidity providers have been using
it before is going to be one of the
differentiating factors, as well as
one of the interesting consolida-
tion factors. It’s a challenge but
the technology is out there now to
do it.”
Jill Sigelbaum, head of FXall,
“It’s a huge advantage
to be a large venue
operator because you
have access to all that
rich data.”
JILL SIGELBAUM, FXALL
Refinitiv’s trading venue for FX,
also highlighted the important role
of data provision and usage for the
future of the FX markets, particu-
larly for different venue operators.
“It’s a huge advantage to be a
large venue operator because you
have access to all that rich data.
This gives us a super amount of
intelligence on how the market
is trading, when is a good time to
trade, and we’re building tools to
give that information back to our
clients so that they have better
intelligence with how they are
trading,” Sigelbaum said.
“The next step will be to auto-
matically generate decision sup-
port suggestions in real-time. The
third step, probably a few years
from now, will be to automatically
trade based on parameters that are
set based on what clients need to
achieve.”
Issue 59 // TheTradeNews.com // 27