In 2019, the wholesale FX market is not the market of yore. Formerly, the defining characteristic of the currencies trading landscape was liquidity fragmentation and siloed pools of cash held within geography-specific currency pairings.
Gold-i CEO Tom Higgins recently claimed in Finance Magnates Magazine (“Cryptocurrency liquidity, past, present, future” article) that “the most challenging factor continues to remain the access to and quality of liquidity.”
The European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) May 2 announcement that 220 of the 71,000 corporate credit and government bonds traded in the EU during Q1 2018 were deemed liquid came as little surprise to any of the market’s participants, globally.
Willis Bruckermann, GreySpark Partners Analyst Consultant, examines how high- and low-touch trading have changed in the past decade, and some of the implications thereof for the future structure of the flow equities market.
Despite recent signs that global equities market volatility is showing signs of life once again after a period of prolonged slumber, investment bank execution franchises should remain mindful of the long-term imperative to continue to reduce costs at the margins across the whole of the brokerage business.
When considering the potential impact that the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) could have on the entirety of the bloc’s corporate economic sector, look no further than the findings of an April 2017 Veritas survey in which 20% of the 900 respondents – characterised as “senior business decision makers” – expressed concern that, globally, non-compliance could put them out of business.
Over the past 18 months, GreySpark Partners has observed that the structure of the flow FX market – consisting of spot FX and vanilla OTC swaps, forwards and futures – has continued its incremental evolution.