FX: Pros look at best uses of rules-based order routing

Rules-based order routing (RBOR) has become a useful tool for achieving increased trading efficiency, although it does not automatically guarantee best execution.

Thomson Reuters announced earlier this month it had introduced RBOR to its REDI execution management system, enabling traders to set rules that determine which trades should be handled automatically rather than through manual intervention.

Capital Markets Startup of the Year — BestX

Financial News last night hosted its 16th annual Trading & Technology Awards Europe at the V&A Museum in London. The awards celebrate the success stories of trading and technology firms operating in, and supporting, financial markets over the past year.

BestX emerged victorious against a strong list of nominees to secure the prestigious Capital Markets Startup of the Year award.

BestX Partners with FastMatch for FX Tape Market Data Service

One of the leading FX transaction cost analysis solutions in the industry, BestX, has announced that the company entered into a partnership deal with Fastmatch. Last year the electronic communications network (ECN) launched a new service called FX Tape.

Fastmatch launched the FX Tape service as a central reference point which market participants can use to evaluate best execution practices. Since the establishment of BestX, the company has been focused on becoming the industry standard product to evaluate FX TCA, delivering services to asset managers, hedge funds, banks, and non-bank Liquidity providers.

Societe Generale turns to BestX for clients to measure best execution

Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking (SG CIB) today announced a partnership with the fintech company BestX, independent transaction cost analysis (TCA) provider for algo-FX spot execution.

SG CIB has developed its own FX algorithmic execution tools, allowing clients to trade directly in the market in a controlled way. The partnership with BestX enables clients to assess the costs and execution performance of their FX transactions through an analytical framework. In addition, clients can benefit from access to a unique set of analytics, which will measure many aspects of execution performance, including spread & impact costs and signalling risk.

Trade Analytics Software Suite BestX Adds New ‘Trend Analysis’ Module

In a post-MiFID II implementation environment, trading costs are taking center stage for the institutional market. Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) has become one of the pillars of the new regulatory framework aiming to focus on providing the buy-side of the market with more information about the Execution of their orders.

One of the leading companies in the industry that specializes in TCA and best execution, BestX, has been providing software suites for pre-trade and post-trade Analytics . Today the company is unveiling a new module to its offering, focusing on analyzing trends in the execution of orders.

Greenwich Report Sees Algos Becoming “Increasingly Popular” in FX

A new report from Greenwich Associates sees algorithmic execution becoming “increasingly popular” among FX traders and argues that traders currently not using the strategies, “may soon have to determine whether they’re putting themselves at a disadvantage by not leveraging all the available tools to achieve the best outcomes for their institution and clients.”

The report does observe that many buy side traders remain reluctant to opt for fee-based execution, although it argues that those that have used algos have discovered that their overall execution costs have dropped “meaningfully”.

FX: TCA use creeps up but benefits still evolving

The impact of transaction cost analysis (TCA) on the FX buy side remains hard to quantify, despite the relative maturity of the technology.

Research published by Greenwich Associates and based on interviews with buy-side traders around the world indicated that 58% of FX trading desks were using TCA systems.

The research found that FX TCA was ahead of fixed income in terms of buy-side adoption, driven in part by a more easily accessible data set for analysis and the increasing usage of algorithmic trading and electronic trading venues.

FX Connect Partners with BestX on TCA

FX Connect is partnering with trade technology software provider, BestX, in order to offer transaction cost analysis (TCA) solutions globally.

“We’re taking what we consider to be an extremely impressive set of TCA functionality that enables outof-the-box integration between the two platforms and offers customers what essentially a turn-key integrated solution that supports the TCA required to underpin best execution policy evidencing and execution,"

David Newns
Head of execution solutions for Global Link

BestX: FX Code may bifurcate liquidity in 2018

The FX Global Code of Conduct could bifurcate liquidity and force venues to manage additional pricing streams, as the industry splits into those who have committed to the Code and those who will not.

“I think 2018 is going to be the year of the Global Code of Conduct,”
Pete Eggleston
Co-founder, BestX

Fintech start-up of the year: BestX

At the top-left of the screen is a set of five traffic-light indicators, summarising the execution of a large spot foreign exchange trade. It’s good news – four of the lights are green, one yellow.

The rest of the dashboard explains why: a set of speedometers show how quickly the order was filled on average, along with the risk of signalling the trade to other market participants; a bar graph shows the actual and expected impact the trade had on the market; a more complex chart shows the progress of the order, with volume increasing cumulatively in the background and circles showing how execution steadily switched from passive to aggressive as minutes passed.

This is a demo, showing some of the ways clients of BestX can track the quality of their foreign exchange execution, and users say it is far richer than anything available before the firm launched in 2016.

Emerging Frontiers on the Data Analytics Battlefield

Probably the biggest change in the FX market over the past 10 years has been the availability of data. This is not to say that we never had data before, most voice traders relied upon their brokers to tell them where the market was – and although it was (very!) unreconstructed, it was data.

In terms of hard numbers on a screen, the market was revolutionised by Reuters terminals in the 1970s, enhanced by the launch of rival offerings (nearly all borne out of a news service), and then again with the launch of electronic trading and mobile apps.

BestX launches reporting module, partners NAB

National Australia Bank is the latest bank to partner transaction cost analysis (TCA) provider BestX to give its buy-side clients third-party analytics services alongside its existing offering.

BestX has signed several deals this year with banks such as BNP Paribas, HSBC, JP Morgan and RBC Capital Markets, as well as non-bank market-maker Citadel Securities.

BestX also announced on October 30 that it has expanded its suite of best execution analytics by launching a regulatory reporting module