Challenging the status quo in high-touch trading
Futures block trading is painful. There is no other way to describe it…
The outdated practices of futures block trading is something I have grappled with for some time, despite the revolution in technology that is enabling every other aspect of our professional and personal lives. But when it comes to futures block trading, I have lost count of the number of times I have heard variations of ‘‘let’s chat again after the rolls as I’ll be flat out’’. This is why I decided to challenge the status quo.
The arduous reality of trading block futures today
Whether underlying trading decisions are tactical or strategic, futures offer round-the-clock trading opportunities, enable direct market exposure and are capital efficient. For the most part, low-volume lots are regularly executed and processed smoothly via automated solutions, but it's the ‘large in size’ trades that present extreme complexity.
During futures rolls, large block orders are executed frequently over a short period of time and this is when the pain of manual execution is most keenly felt by both sell and buy side participants. At these times, current systems traditionally designed for processing underlying cash assets and shoehorned to ‘fit’ within the operating model for futures, consequently cannot deliver consistent and reliable RFQ price data.
What’s more, markets invariably shift during execution as delivery is largely via multiple, disparate message based conversations and pricing is deeply dependent on multiple, sometimes conflicting, variables.
Over the years, I have seen how manual processes required to augment these platforms deficiencies, alongside the inability to access and evaluate a complete spectrum of pricing, introduce unnecessary risk into the system and worst still, result in potential profitable trading opportunities being left untapped.
And while we all know that technology-delivered transparency would make a difference to the execution and analysis that's required to drive good trading/business decisions on all sides, the industry has not embraced innovation and automation, because it is deemed too complex to do.
But it doesn’t have to be this hard…
To address this stalemate, I looked to the best practitioners and the best technology to simplify and dramatically reduce the number of actions currently being carried out during futures execution. The result is InTick: an independent platform, fit for purpose and designed for the listed derivatives blocking market from the outset.
We leverage technology to digitise, manual, bilateral processes conducted over several platforms to provide a single source of truth for futures pricing - it therefore delivers the multi-sourced, accurate and actionable price and trade information that firms need in order to trade efficiently and profitably taking into account the nuances of each asset class, instrument and exchange.
We now have the answer
At InTick we fully appreciate the range of challenges that traders experience when tasked with delivering slick execution and performance in non-automated markets.
We know that futures play an extremely important role in portfolio management and encompass a diverse product range from equities, fixed income and FX to commodities, metals and energy. And we understand that currently block execution is overly cumbersome with participants often too stretched for time to really understand or challenge the norm.
Our aim is to remove the pain of manual execution and support organisations who are truly looking to embrace innovation to optimise block futures trading and drive their business growth.
Here's what we set out to do: bring innovation, automation and efficiency to traditionally opaque, highly complex and manual futures block trading processes that significantly impact price discovery and performance.
InTick is a fully centralised hub for price dissemination and discovery for listed derivatives block trading;
A true All-to-All matching facility.
With InTick, trading participants are empowered with actionable liquidity insights from an automated, simplified and transparent platform that centralises traditional processes and workflow information. InTick removes the cost, complexity and the pain of futures block trading.
Crucially, by challenging the status quo, we can give time back to our clients so the world doesn't have to stop spinning during the rolls.
If you would like to speak to myself or the team about what we do, please do get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.
James Goater
CEO InTick