Buyer’s Guide: Cross-asset E-trading Solutions 2021

The survey questionnaire underpinning this report required the participating technology vendors to provide self-assessments of the depth and breadth of their cross-asset e-trading solutions:

• across 97 instruments and products types tradable on a listed and on an OTC
• basis in the cash equities, cash FX, commodities, derivatives, fixed income and credit, and structured products asset classes;
• from both a buyside firm and sellside institution perspective; and
• across 10 functional groupings and 213 granular functionalities.

The GreySpark-assessed outcome of the findings of the cross-asset e-trading vendor solutions survey shows that, in 2021:

• no one system can provide the functional capabilities coverage required to allow traders to switch processes and workflows seamlessly between any or all asset classes at will; and that
• the lessons learned through the shortcomings of the new technology outputs produced since 2010 show that the markets coverage costs rationalisation objectives of trading businesses are more readily achieved when they move away from the rationale that a cross-asset or multi-asset class trading system must achieve the possibly impossible goal of covering all asset classes, products and instrument types all the time.

This report reviews the functional capabilities of:

• ARQA Technologies Quik;
• Fidelity International Systems (FIS) Global FIS Cross-Asset Trading and Risk Platform;
• Gatelab traderpath;
• Horizon Software The Horizon Trading Platform;
• Itiviti Group UL OMS;
• Quod Financial The Quod Adaptive Execution Platform (AEP);
• smartTrade Technologies LiquidityFX & SmartFI;
• TradingScreen TradeSmart OEMS; and
• valantic Trading Solutions FSA iQbonds / iMarket / iQrepos / iQderivatives