Road Trip to IDX: Trading Technologies' Green Outlines Tech Trends and 24/7 Trading

Alun Green, EVP and Managing Director of Futures and Options at Trading Technologies, joins the show from the International Derivatives Expo in London to discuss the growing importance of integrating technologies like AI and cloud computing as markets adjust to new variables like the boom in energy demand. Green outlines the challenges of 24/7 trading, emphasizing the need for real-time risk management and consolidated platforms. Green also notes the trend towards unified trading tools that integrate best practices from various asset classes, aiming to streamline the trading experience for end users.

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Transcript

(Note: This transcript wsa created using AI. It has not been edited verbatim)

Sean McMahon  0:00  
Sean, Hello everyone, and welcome to the Modern Money SmartPod. I'm your host, Sean McMahon, and today I'm coming to you from the International Derivatives Expo in London. This event is hosted by the Futures Industry Association, and we're here gathering insights from some of the leading experts in the financial services industry. Joining me right now is Alun Green, EVP and Managing Director of futures and options for Trading Technologies. Alan, how you doing today? 

Alun Green  0:33  
I'm great. Thanks. Thanks very much for having me on 

Sean McMahon  0:36  
We are making our way through the agenda of the first day here at IDX. How are things going for you so far? What's the vibe?

Alun Green  0:42  
You know, I love this conference. You know, if you look at the history of this, it's always a conference that was in the City of London, and people would go in, would go out. But a few years ago, this moved over to a slightly different venue, and I think since then, it's really started to kick off as being something very much based around the conference itself, not an afterthought, but something that people are really wanting to go to and participate in. So I think it's, you know, increasingly energetic vibe here. 

Sean McMahon  1:12  
Well, that's, I would concur. It's definitely been very vibrant. We've been recording on the on the sidelines, and lots of noise and yelling and laughter and everything like that. So what are some of the key themes you're hearing so far?

Speaker 1  1:22  
So, you know, I think when you look across the different global conferences, you look at this one, you think it's a it's a London based conference, but it's very much not. It's an international conference that happens to be here. So I think a lot of the themes are, how can we get better access to global markets, no matter where you are in the world. And, you know, London just happens to be the place where we're coming together. So I think when you look at that, there's a lot of themes about how we can open up outbound, trading inwards into countries like India, China, you know, markets that historically have been a little bit closed, but then also going the other way. How it is that people, you know, particularly in Asia and, you know, in South America, are able to access these massive Liquidity Markets that we've got in America and Europe. So I think, although it's a London conference, a lot of the trend is, how can we bring different parts of the globe closer together? Are you hearing any surprises? So I don't know that there's surprises in, you know, things that I didn't expect, but probably the speed at which things are moving, you know, is definitely surprising for me. If we just look at the uptake of technology. You know, cloud computing has been around for quite a while. I think it's now that that's becoming really significant in the capital market space taken a little bit of lead time. But when we look at newer trends, you know, AI and genii in particular, that's coming a lot more quickly, right? You know, so maybe, whereas if we looked historically, there might be a few years before something comes into the traditional finance world of the somewhat sleepy capital market space, perhaps, I think now that's really changing. And you know, those gaps between how retail trades and how institutional trades are just coming closer and closer together.

Sean McMahon  3:09  
Okay, now on tomorrow's agenda, you're sitting on the panel that's, I guess, appropriately called trading technology. I don't know why they didn't go plural, just for you guys. Obviously you probably participated in some of the pre panel planning. What are some of the themes that we can expect to hear during that session?

Speaker 1  3:24  
Well, I think it's going to be an exciting session. I want to, you know, call out the FIA and Jason Stipe, who's chairing it for, you know, really putting some thoughtful questions together. And I think some of the themes are around just getting a little bit, maybe under the covers, as to what are the difficulties involved, whether it's from a exchange or, you know, vendor perspective, in bringing new things out to the markets. So things that may not be obvious to everybody, if I can give you an example, maybe, please, do please. Do you know, one of the trends that we're that we're definitely seeing, is increased demand in the energy space, and, you know, moving more into top day trading. And you know what people call spot trading on the energy market, as you can imagine. You know, that's not something that happens five days a week, it's something that happens seven days a week, 24 hours. And you know just how you support that when you've got servers that need maintenance and those types of things that you need to think about, you know, when you're building out these businesses are the type of things that we're going to address, but it's probably one or two surprises as well. Come to the panel and find out.

Sean McMahon  4:28  
Oh, I'll be there for sure. And I guess I I would say I'm not surprised to hear that we'll be talking about how to cope with all this increased energy demand. You know, would be it from AI or anything else. It's obviously a hot topic across many business sectors. Really, one of the other hot topics at the past couple of Fi events has been 24/7 trading. And I imagine an organization like yours is getting a lot of questions from clients and how to tackle that, and how to manage that, you know, manage the risk associated with that, not just the technology piece of it. So, so what can you tell us on that? 

Speaker 1  4:55  
So I think it's important to remember that in many ways, 24/7 Trading has been around in different markets. So what we're really looking at is trying to use technology tools where we can to make that simpler, to make that safer, from a risk perspective. So when you look at, for example, the power markets, as we move to 24/7, trading there, from our perspective, it is making sure that we understand when your maintenance cycles are but we also understand how you're managing risk when you're managing that across a continuous spectrum. You can't just sit there and look at an end of day position. You need to be looking at things in a very real time way, understanding exactly what your I guess, portfolio, you know, including a variety of different products, looks like, and that just emphasizes the need to try and have things on consolidated platforms that are working in real time. So I think these things all sort of play together. The key to risk management on a 24/7 basis is to actually be working in real time.

Sean McMahon  6:04  
Okay, so we've talked about solutions related to energy markets, solutions related to 24/7 trading. What else are you in the team at trading technology seeing out there in the marketplace?

Speaker 1  6:13  
So I think that historically, people were very happy to have sort of specialist trading tools for different asset classes that have a screen for their equities, that have a screen for their fixed income, they'd have a screen for their futures. Sometimes they'd end up re keying things. Sometimes they'd end up trying to put in a complex trade and hitting Enter on three keyboards at the same time. I think they're increasingly seeing I don't really want to be doing that. I want to have everything on one venue. I don't want to have everything on one screen. So I think we're seeing driven by the customers, the need to consolidate down all of those tools. And along with that, bring best of breed. I think there are certain things that in the futures world, we've historically done quite well, but there's also things that we can absolutely learn from equities trading, from foreign exchange trading, from fixed income trading. So we're sort of trying to bring together different parts of best practice, share those amongst the different asset classes, and have a trading experience that's based on what the end user is really wanting to do, rather on what the technology is providing them.

Sean McMahon  7:16  
Okay. Well, hey, listen, Alan, I know it's a incredibly busy couple of days here in London for you, and I appreciate you taking the time to do appreciate you taking the time to join us today. So thank you very much. 

Alun Green

It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much indeed. 

Sean McMahon

Okay, well, that's all for now. Be sure to follow this podcast feed for more episodes from the International Derivatives Expo hosted by the Futures Industry Association.