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2023 Survey Results
Eddie Wen, J.P. Morgan’s Head of Digital Markets, shares his insights on how trading desks are managing liquidity challenges in 2023.
Josephine
Gallagher:
Welcome to Trader TV at FILS, your insight into institutional trading. I'm
Josephine Gallagher. Today we are discussing how trading desks are evolving in
response to liquidity challenges. And we have Eddie Wen at J.P. Morgan joining
us today. Eddie, welcome to the show.
Eddie
Wen: Thank
you for having me here. Over the broader last several decades, the markets have
continually moved toward a more electronic landscape. And from the buy-side as
well as the sell-side perspective, they're both adapting to these changing
liquidity dynamics.
Transactions
are happening more electronically. The number of trades that we are processing
on the sell side is increasing. The costs of execution's generally going down.
However, the dynamics of how you trade and what you trade with and what
platform you use and how much investment you make, these are general challenges
a lot of the buy side and sell sides are facing.
Josephine Gallagher: OK, and how is J.P. Morgan
evolving its trading function?
Eddie Wen: First, I mentioned already
it's embracing electronic trading. Every trading desk will have an electronic
trading team that understands the technology market structure as well as have
the quantitative skills to analyze a lot of data to be ready for this change.
Secondly,
it's really embracing data analytics and the more recent topic around AI.
Generally speaking, with the digitization of the workflow, businesses are
becoming more automated. There's a lot more data on the back of it. The ability
to analyze the data and use it to optimize our business and having the
capability of doing that consistently and continually over time, I think that's
been a huge advantage.
Thirdly,
I think it's really around promoting economies of scale. The numbers do start
to add up. And especially as margins are compressing, the cost of execution
becomes a big factor when it comes to a dealer's ability to service a large
number of customers.
And
finally, I think one of the biggest benefits for electronification is it allows
us to break down many of the silos. Historically, when we look at the
organization structure and how we manage our business, typically they are
focused along vertical product lines. And increasingly, you're seeing the risk
characteristics of different products look very similar.
Take,
for example, in our credit and equity space, we recently combined the credit
and equity businesses together. Products like single-security trading,
portfolio trading, ETF trading, all that is now managed under one team under
one technology platform and sharing a lot of the risk characteristics that
benefits all these businesses together if you put them in one package.
Josephine Gallagher: Fantastic. And what are the
services that are seeing the most engagement?
Eddie Wen: There's been a general uptick
across all electronic trading product development. I think you'll see that a
lot of clients are trading more electronically simply because it's easier. And
the cost of execution has been a lot lower. Specifically in areas like credit,
electronification has really taken hold, particularly around portfolio trading,
as well as ETF. That's been the growth area.
In
areas like foreign exchange and interest rates, uptake of algorithmic execution
has been the focus. We recently launched a U.S. Treasury algorithm that allows
clients to execute benchmark treasuries algorithmically very much like the way
people have done it in equities and foreign exchange. That's been a new product
innovation.
Productization
of data analytics has been a really interesting area. We've been building a lot
of tools that takes advantage of the information that J.P. Morgan has and
provide analytics for our clients. Like, for example, in foreign exchange, we
have a product called net flows, which allows us to present to a client the
aggregate flow characteristic that we're seeing in the foreign exchange market.
We
have a portfolio analytics solution, which started in an investable index area
of the business in equities and now is being expanded to delta 1 as well as
credit and loans and allow those products to have the same analytical
capabilities that's built for another asset class.
I
would say that in general, providing workflow solutions that help client do
business with the bank has been a big focus. Software that we're building,
getting them much more integrated with the bank, making their jobs easier has been
a huge focus on product development.
Josephine Gallagher: I'd like to thank Eddie for
his insight. And thank you for watching. This has been Trader TV.
[MUSIC
PLAYING]
Market Matters
FICC Market Structure: The electronic trading evolution
February 21, 2023
Traders predict that 'Recession risk' will have the biggest impact on markets in 2023. Closely followed by 'Inflation' and 'Geopolitical conflict'.
Question asked: Which potential developments will have the greatest impact on the markets in 2023? (Rank in order of importance)
This chart reflects that traders predict Recession risk (30%) will have the biggest impact on markets in 2023. Followed by Inflation (26%), Geopolitical conflict (19%), Market and economy dislocation (14%), Government policy change (9%), ESG, Climate risk factors (1%) and Global pandemic (0%). For 2022: Inflation (48%) will have the biggest impact, followed by Market and economy dislocation (13%), Global pandemic (13%), Recession risk (5%) and ESG/Climate risk factors (3%).
For traders that predicted ‘Inflation’ to have an impact on markets, we asked them ‘What is your outlook for the impact of inflation when pricing it in for 2023?’, with 44% of traders predicting inflation will decrease.
Question asked: What is your outlook for the impact of inflation when pricing it in for 2023, based on the region you are located in? (Select one option)
This image shows that 44% of traders predict inflation will decrease. Followed by ‘Inflation will level off’ (37%) and ‘inflation will increase’(19%).
58% of traders surveyed based in the United States expect U.S. inflation levels to level off and 41% of traders surveyed based in the United Kingdom predict inflation to decrease.
Question asked: What is predicted impact of inflation, depending on the survey participants' location by region?
This chart displays what percentage of traders predict inflation to increase, decrease or level off, by their location: U.K., U.S., Rest of Europe and APAC. For U.K.-based traders, the graph shows inflation will increase (27%), decrease (41%) and level off (32%). For U.S.-based traders, the graph shows inflation will increase (10%), decrease (32%) and level off (58%). For traders in the Rest of Europe, the graph shows inflation will increase (13%), decrease (56%) and level off (31%). For APAC-based traders, the graph shows inflation will increase (25%), decrease (35%) and level off (40%).