Fixed Income Leaders Summit - Takeaways

Steve went to the Fixed Income Leaders Summit last week. It was busy event, held in Amsterdam with 871 attendees.

Key Takeaways -

Technology -
Interesting to see how the FI market has progressed since last year’s conference. Most buy-side firms are much more advanced in recognising that they need to invest in technology. Panels included Aggregation, eCommerce, and OMS/EMS - and I noted only 18% of the buy-side currently use an EMS, BUT more than 50% are looking to use an EMS in the next year.

Regulation was mentioned in almost every panel or presentation -
The Fixed Income landscape will be different post MiFID II, as it drives major structural change in the market. BUT 62% of delegates aren't ready for January 3rd, 2018.

The Buy-side have access to more data than ever -
This means they can make better informed decisions about price availability, and also have the ability to be a price maker

Best Execution discussions dominated -
There were numerous discussions about Best Ex. An interesting theme emerged, that Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) is not always right for FI markets, which are less liquid and function differently from Equities. A more holistic approach may be more suitable - “Best Execution Analysis”, where focus is not on price alone, but also methodology, size, liquidity, history, market impact etc.

Fragmentation -
Everyone agrees that market fragmentation is a major issue. John Greenan’s list of 137 e-trading venues (and counting) was referenced a few times : http://blog.alignment-systems.com/2014/12/fixed-income-trading-new-venues.html

FinTech / Dragons' Den -
I saw there very interesting pitches from capital markets FinTechs - ChartIQ, Limina and LiquidityCube. The photo shows Limina mid-pitch. Congratulations to Dan Schleifer of ChartIQ who was chosen as the winner.

Kudos to Mark Goodman of UBS and explaining why Tinder and Steaming Music are relevant to the changing technology requirements in FI Markets.

And finally, thanks to Oliver Kirkbright and David Bullen for doing a great job with programme content and hosting.

A great conference.

https://fixedincome.wbresearch.com