[ A L G O R I T H M I C
T R A D I N G
S U R V E Y ]
UBS
U
BS saw a slight increase in the percentage of
responses from long-only buy-side firms in this
year’s survey. The majority of long-only respondents
for UBS came from the $1-10 billion of assets under
management size bracket (one-third), with a marginal-
ly smaller percentage managing more than $50 billion.
UBS was the stand-out performer among the banks
profiled for this year’s survey, recording the highest
average score of all banks profiled with 5.76, also the
long-only survey average. UBS also recorded some of
the most improved year-on-year scores in this year’s
survey, addressing some of its areas of poor perfor-
mance in the 2018 survey. The bank saw increased
scores from long-only respondents in 13 of the 15 cat-
egories under review (the other two being new cate-
gories introduced this year), with significant increases
for increasing trader productivity (up 0.67), reducing
market impact (up 0.56), execution consistency (up
0.45), speed (up 0.73), price improvement (up 0.74),
customisation (up 0.46) and customer support (up
0.52). UBS’ lowest score this year was in the algo
monitoring capabilities category (introduced this year)
with 5.51, still the seventh-highest score in this area of
profiled providers.
UBS RATINGS FOR ALGORITHM PERFORMANCE
Increase trader
productivity Reduce market
impact Execution
consistency Cost Speed Anonymity Price
improvement Customisation
5.81 5.77 5.82 5.69 5.91 5.98 5.62 5.67
Ease of use Customer support Execution
consulting Dark pool access Flexibiltiy and sophistication
of smart order routing Algo monitoring
capabilities Data on venue/order
routing logic or analysis Average
score
5.87 5.86 5.57 5.92 5.85 5.51 5.53 5.76
KEY STATS
5.98 5.51 27%
Highest score
(anonymity) Lowest score
(algo monitoring capabilities) Most popular non-equity asset
traded via algo by respondents:
Exchange-traded funds
+0.74 +0.20 43%
Most improved
year-on-year score
(price improvement) Least improved
year-on-year score
(flexibility and sophistication
of smart order routing) Most used
algo performance
measurement method:
Implementation shortfall TCA
92 // TheTrade // Spring 2019