Gawronski: 2010 is Year of Asia
June 9, 2010
The coming year is when high-speed trading will gain serious momentum in the most populous continent on Earth, said Joseph Gawronski, president and chief operating officer of Rosenblatt Securities, the agency-only brokerage which is one of the largest floor brokers on the New York Stock Exchange.
"2010 is the year you're really starting to see stuff happen in Asia," he told the Buy-Side Tech High Frequency Trading NYC conference at the Andaz Wall Street Hotel.
Competition among increasingly high-speed, electronically-driven markets has not emerged in China, Japan and other Asian nations in the way that it has in the Western world, because, he noted, there has not been a regulatory driver.
In the United States, there were rules instituted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, most notably Reg ATS, establishing principles for alternate trading systems, and Reg NMS, for national market systems. In Europe, the enactment in 2007 of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive spurred the emergence of "multilateral trading facilities" that compete with the London Stock Exchange, the Deutsche Borse and other long-established markets.
This year, though, there are clear signs, Gawronski said, that technology and technology-driven venues will drive new forms of trading in Asia.
The most notable developments:
* The arrival of Chi-X, the developer of alternate exchanges in Canada and Europe, in Japan and Australia.
* The institution by the Tokyo Stock Exchange of its new Arrowhead trading platform, which slashed times for executing orders, in advance of the arrival of Chi-X.
* Huge price cuts and technology upgrades by the Australian Stock Exchange, also in advance of the expected launch within the next year of a Chi-X market there.
* The recently announced plan by the Singapore Stock Exchange that it will deploy the latest version of Nasdaq OMX Group's advanced matching engine and trading technology.
Earlier this week, Quod Financial Systems said it planned to expand its smart order-routing business in Asia. And the Sydney Futures Exchange will begin to provide United States customers direct access from Chicago, through the CME Group.
The global economy will increasingly be driven by Asian nations, especially China, which must deliver more goods and services to its own middle classes, a trend with inflationary implications for the rest of the world, financial leaders said Tuesday at a conference in San Francisco.
Today, the United States leads with 18.6 percent of world output, followed by 17.5 percent for China, 17.1 percent for Europe and 7.6 percent for India, according to a presentation at the Asia Banking and Finance Conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
