tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13351209926618440602024-03-07T02:20:54.796+00:00Global Electronic TradingTechnology strategy for the front-office. Software development, FIX Orchestra, Cryptocurrency, data-analytics, OMS, EMS, TCA, FIX and global electronic trading. Fixed income, equities, FX, ETD and OTC. Buy-side, sell-side, hedge funds, exchanges and execution venues.
And MQTT and Internet-of-Things...Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.comBlogger351125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-86584235752359743342023-11-11T16:29:00.003+00:002023-11-11T16:29:25.086+00:00Controversial viewpoint: As a fintech start-up you need followship more than leadership <p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Look at LinkedIn and most so-called professional business fora and we see page after page on leadership and what is needed to lead and drive change.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Strangely though it's vanishingly rare to see anyone look at the flip-side of followship...<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What is followship? Simply put, if you have a number of people who are leaders then surely one of the requirements to actually be a leader is to have followers? Otherwise that person is simply a person going about his or her business.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">An example of followship (albeit not stated in that language) is Amazon</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(47, 48, 51); color: #2f3033; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #2f3033; font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white;">The slightly obfuscatory language is indeed about followship "Once a decision is determined" - by whom? The leader of leaders perhaps? "They commit wholly." They being the followers of the decision making leader?</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #2f3033; font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white;">This indicates you need more followers than leaders.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #2f3033; font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(47, 48, 51); color: #2f3033; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p><br /></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Kyiv, Ukraine, 0200050.4501 30.523422.139866163821154 -4.6328500000000012 78.760333836178845 65.67965tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-31699596411160549842023-10-23T15:03:00.001+00:002023-10-23T15:03:20.702+00:00Controversial viewpoint: As a fintech start-up you don't need or want a marquee client<p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Over the years this has been a big topic which has been bounced back and forth. In response to this debate, some thoughts…<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">If you have a fintech start-up do you need a marquee client?<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">First, let’s define a marquee client. A marquee client is one that is big enough to hold up the business. A marquee client in the asset management world is the like of BlackRock, Vanguard, Capital International, Prudential, Amundi and suchlike. In the investment banking side it’s Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and so on.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The idea of a marquee client is that it provides great answers to several questions that usually come up during any demonstration and pitching cycle:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><ol start="1" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;" type="a"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Who else uses your product?<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">What is your product/market fit?<o:p></o:p></li></ol><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The answer to both of these is effectively “<span class="SpellE">BigCo</span> uses our product, therefore we have product/market fit and we have been validated as a decent firm, able to pass due-diligence and get over the hurdle of procurement, purchasing and payment”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Who would not be reassured to see that a start-up has been able to persuade one of these global titans of industry to use their product?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Indeed, it’s a very persuasive pitch and one that has a great deal of merit.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">And now for the but…<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">But, the good folks of the firms that exist within the rarified category of “marquee client for a fintech start-up” are bright and industrious people. And certainly not naïve. They know full-well that they have marquee status. And that means that your pricing negotiation is pretty one-sided.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Beyond pricing, the next challenge is the bandwidth consumed by them in terms of product management, business analysis, integration and development. All of which then pulls you away from <span style="font-size: 11pt;">your challenges of finding and winning the next batch of clients.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Where a marquee client is baked-in to a product roadmap through happy circumstance (winning a consulting client which turns into a product client such as CRD/Putnam or Cazenove/Fidessa) then it’s a wonderful thing. But searching for one is a risky exercise.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>TL;DR if you have a marquee client ready-to-go that’s great, if not, be very careful about cost/benefit ratios in trying to find one.</b></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel32.0852999 34.7817675999999883.7750660638211571 -0.37448240000001221 60.395533736178848 69.9380176tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-20409788292076904802023-10-17T14:41:00.001+00:002023-10-17T14:41:29.233+00:00What does a 21st Century Exchange matching engine look like? (part three)<p>In the spirit of Instant Karma...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="394" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7-SSa-D1i-M" width="475" youtube-src-id="7-SSa-D1i-M"></iframe></div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;">As replicated by the charity
album Help by War Child, as recounted by wikipedia:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>The album's recording was inspired by the concept behind
John Lennon's "Instant Karma!" – records, like newspapers, should be
released as soon as they are recorded. Help was recorded on Monday, 4 September
1995, mixed on Tuesday 5th and was in shops on Saturday 9th.<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p>Further to <a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2023/08/how.hard.can.it.be.html">https://blog.alignmentsystems.com/2023/08/how.hard.can.it.be.html</a> and <a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2023/09/well.that.escalated.quickly.html">https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2023/09/well.that.escalated.quickly.html</a> some further work...</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first iteration of the <a href="https://github.com/AlignmentSystems/MatchingEngine" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alignment Systems matching engine</a> was designed and
built in one week.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>We all shine on...</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>Further enhancements have been added to</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;">Allow
multiple order books to exist in a horizontal scaling model, such that the
system can be configured to handle increases and decreases in number of
instruments traded and in quantity of orders and cancels received.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is based upon an implementation of
Kafka.<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;">Provide
UDP/Multicast market data<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;">Implement
a kill-switch<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;">Implement
cancel-on-disconnect<o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0cm; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;">Counterparty
configuration</li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal">The next step is building something like a CSD/CCP to hold
positions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the spirit of 2023, this
is going to be an implementation of Hyperledger Fabric.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Watch this space!<o:p></o:p></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-54121206547730171302023-09-06T09:46:00.002+00:002023-09-06T09:46:18.174+00:00FIX Recommended Practices - 24x7 Sessions<p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Have you ever wanted to run a FIX session continuously?</span></div><span><span style="font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Worried about running out of sequence numbers?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Worry not, the FIX Trading Community has published recommendations on how to run your FIX session for the next 584 years (if you consume 1,000,000,000 sequence numbers per session, if you use less then the session will last even longer).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Free to download from <a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/packages/fix-recommended-practices-24x7/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFeGxoknGYeqS_4bfAITGkLBg9xn0TBPz2FdOPnCI8K9otQWHMBl7Fnc8dpyWP1np3Qg3Zm9KQciLnfjCfs3sNZzkPd7zidHytAXS93bZsELl6I59LP6s1h8t8Rr26cLg3yNiTWDQutgMkcUxHYjqNC8Ttbgc7qFO5voXn1K8oDyOQ0O9HDnNOyUxqd4/s3092/Screenshot%202023-09-06%20at%2019.39.23.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2274" data-original-width="3092" height="470" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFeGxoknGYeqS_4bfAITGkLBg9xn0TBPz2FdOPnCI8K9otQWHMBl7Fnc8dpyWP1np3Qg3Zm9KQciLnfjCfs3sNZzkPd7zidHytAXS93bZsELl6I59LP6s1h8t8Rr26cLg3yNiTWDQutgMkcUxHYjqNC8Ttbgc7qFO5voXn1K8oDyOQ0O9HDnNOyUxqd4/w640-h470/Screenshot%202023-09-06%20at%2019.39.23.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/packages/fix-recommended-practices-24x7/">https://www.fixtrading.org/packages/fix-recommended-practices-24x7/</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p><br /></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Singapore1.352083 103.819836-26.958150836178845 68.663586 29.662316836178846 138.976086tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-26332216486996522722023-09-05T11:50:00.002+00:002023-09-05T11:50:51.307+00:00What does a 21st Century Exchange matching engine look like? part two...<p><span style="font-family: arial;">How do you implement a matching engine from a clean sheet of
paper design?<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the <a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2023/08/how.hard.can.it.be.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">initial post in this series</a> I offered five core
functions:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Receive orders from member firms</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Add an Order to an <span class="spelle">OrderBook</span>.
That Order then does one of three things (potentially more than one
sequentially)</span></li><ol><li><span style="font-family: arial;">executes in full</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">executes in part</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">rests on the order book</span></li></ol><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Manage the state of the order book</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Any execution must be notified back to the member firm that
sent the order</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Any execution must be notified to market data recipients
with the appropriate level of anonymity</span></li></ol><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">With some parameters/constraints which were:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Implementation in Java using OpenJDK</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use a sensible number of threads (Client Simulator x2, Main,
one thread per order book)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use of QuickFIX/J with FIX 4.4</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">No High Availability</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">No Disaster Recovery</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Write clean code – use annotations, enumerations,
interfaces, constants, exceptions</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Write the code so that <span class="spelle">JavaDoc</span> can
execute to provide documentation for developers who look at this in the future.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Do not spend more than six days on this.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use MIT license and open-source the whole thing</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use <a href="https://github.com/AlignmentSystems/MatchingEngine">https://github.com/AlignmentSystems/MatchingEngine</a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Build in client simulators such that orders & executions
can be sent in.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Build a stub for market data, if possible use SBE-FIXP-SOFH
for the market data implementation (start with TCP/IP unicast but again, if
possible, switch to UDP/Multicast for the Transport)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Limit Orders only (I have promised myself I won't got into a
market microstructure rant but unlike some exchanges I think there is an
imperative to ethical behaviour in system architecture)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Simple partial fills as first implementation with order
restatement and more realistic behaviour to follow</span></li></ul><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">Let’s look at the five core functions first:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Receive orders from member firms<b>==>DONE</b>, FIX4.4 interface for inbound limit orders.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Add an Order to an OrderBook.</span></li><ol><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Add an Order to an <span class="spelle">OrderBook</span>:
executes in full<b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Add an Order to an <span class="spelle">OrderBook</span>:
executes in part<b>==>Not yet started. </b>This is not a big ask, the orderbook member has to be updated to reduce the
size of the order by the executed amount, partial execution sent out and market
data transmitted)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Add an Order to an <span class="spelle">OrderBook</span>:
rests on the order book<b>==>DONE</b></span></li></ol><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Manage the state of the order book<b>==>DONE FOR FULL-FILL</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Any execution must be notified back to the member firm that
sent the order <b><b>==>DONE</b>. </b>Execution
Report sent to member for order acknowledgement and execution report for
execution sent to member</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Any execution must be notified to market data recipients
with the appropriate level of anonymity<b>==>DONE</b>. UDP/Multicast implementation of Simple Open Framing Header and Simple Binary
Encoding of anonymised market data message.</span></li></ol><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">The parameters/constraints were specified as:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Implementation in Java using OpenJDK<b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use a sensible number of threads (Client Simulator x2, Main,
one thread per order book) <b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use of QuickFIX/J with FIX 4.4 <b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">No High Availability <o:p></o:p><b>==>HA NOT DONE AS PLANNED</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">No Disaster Recovery <o:p></o:p><b>==>DR NOT DONE AS PLANNED</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Write clean code – use annotations, enumerations,
interfaces, constants, exceptions <o:p></o:p><b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Write the code so that <span class="spelle">JavaDoc</span> can
execute to provide documentation for developers who look at this in the future. <o:p></o:p><b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Do not spend more than six days on this. <o:p></o:p><b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use MIT license and open-source the whole thing <o:p></o:p><b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use <a href="https://github.com/AlignmentSystems/MatchingEngine">https://github.com/AlignmentSystems/MatchingEngine</a> <o:p></o:p><b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Build in client simulators such that orders & executions
can be sent in. <o:p></o:p><b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Build a stub for market data, if possible use SBE-FIXP-SOFH
for the market data implementation (start with TCP/IP unicast but again, if
possible, switch to UDP/Multicast for the Transport) <o:p></o:p><b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Limit Orders only (I have promised myself I won't got into a
market microstructure rant but unlike some exchanges I think there is an
imperative to ethical behaviour in system architecture) <o:p></o:p><b>==>DONE</b></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Simple partial fills as first implementation with order
restatement and more realistic behaviour to follow <o:p></o:p><b>==>DONE</b></span></li></ul><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">What next steps are there for enhancements?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Partial fills. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">HA/DR</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">FIX Orchestra </span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">24x7 Operation </span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Volume testing</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Market Data Enhancements</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Scaling-out</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Kill-Switch</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Binary Order Interface</span></li></ul><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Partial fills</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is something a proper matching engine must have. Maybe one day to implement this.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Cancel-on-disconnect</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is something a proper matching engine must have.
The challenge is to implement the logic at a scale that fits the use-case –
consider the logic in an institutional equity exchange versus an institutional
options exchange. The throughput requirement is quite different in each
case. Do you “spoof” incoming FIX cancel messages or iterate through an
orderbook in-memory and remove affected messages?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">HA/DR</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is something a proper matching engine must have. Along
with the thematically linked cancel-on-disconnect. This impacts on all
aspects of the system – persisting parts of the system data to disk while not
impacting performance is a balancing exercise.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">FIX Orchestra</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As the creator of the forerunner to FIX Orchestra FIIDL (<a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2014/04/fidl-fix-interface-definition-language.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FIXInteractive Interface Definition Language</a>)
and the person who chose the name FIX Orchestra, I have been involved since the
start. <span style="text-align: left;">See for example </span><a href="https://youtu.be/eOIA_7bRQyI" rel="nofollow" style="text-align: left;" target="_blank">this</a><span style="text-align: left;"> and </span><a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/packages/onboarding-using-orchestra-recommended-practices/" rel="nofollow" style="text-align: left;" target="_blank">this</a><span style="text-align: left;">.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Implementing FIX Orchestra for the Alignment Matching Engine
is one quick win which is a solid contender for future development after
implementation of cancel-on-disconnect and partial fills.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">24x7 Operation</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">This would be relatively easy to follow the guidelines
available <a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/packages/fix-recommended-practices-24x7/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a> from the work by the <a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/groups/continuousmkts/ " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">working group </a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">To deliver this we would also have to modify one of the
dependencies of the Alignment Matching Engine. The dependency is
QuickFIX/J which is not 24x7 compatible – yet!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Volume testing</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is a much more complex task to see the real bottlenecks in the platform. Use something such as Corvil to spot problems.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Market Data Enhancements</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">Provide an orderbook snapshot service on a periodic basis
over UDP/Multicast<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">Provide an orderbook replay service over TCP/IP<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Scaling-out</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the moment the whole platform runs on one box. This
is not viable for production use. The APIs between the components would need to
be reworked inside the implementation, such that</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">the number of FIX engines can be increased and distributed
to multiple boxes</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">the number of <span class="spelle">OrderBooks</span> can be
increased and distributed to multiple boxes</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">market data distribution can be performed from a specified
set of UDP/Multicast ports</span></li></ul><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Kill-Switch</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;">Alongside cancel-on-disconnect essential for an institutional exchange<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Binary Order Interface</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">An implementation using <a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/standards/sbe/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SBE</a>, <a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/standards/fix-sofh/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SOFH</a> and <a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/standards/fixp/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FIXP</a> can provide a fast to parse message format that can contribute to a low-latency environment. Parsing, coercion and other requirements of the string-based FIX message format mean that moving to a binary interface is a worthwhile performance improvement.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibMKheApyltV2hR85wPXIQiDFSpBurR6kgyejbGBQxbgOiWdFdMiKFit9ZqJOkALgnG7Xhkp8vSTAmuc6Gz9keq_iJJNvzvST9WfxOH12azamKAicGjPjtUPrkaxj2He5adyNEM_eOkvtpidGCWOBeC79f9zjBpUe4S6jx8TI89dEeVWwnYG_Xg8Z5rwY/s2204/javadoc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1351" data-original-width="2204" height="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibMKheApyltV2hR85wPXIQiDFSpBurR6kgyejbGBQxbgOiWdFdMiKFit9ZqJOkALgnG7Xhkp8vSTAmuc6Gz9keq_iJJNvzvST9WfxOH12azamKAicGjPjtUPrkaxj2He5adyNEM_eOkvtpidGCWOBeC79f9zjBpUe4S6jx8TI89dEeVWwnYG_Xg8Z5rwY/w640-h392/javadoc.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screengrab of JavaDoc generated from the code</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"> Code plus gradle build files are all <a href="https://github.com/AlignmentSystems/MatchingEngine" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="371" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FONN-0uoTHI" width="446" youtube-src-id="FONN-0uoTHI"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p>
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com1Bucha, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, 0829250.553332999999988 30.21351722.243099163821142 -4.9427330000000005 78.863566836178833 65.369767tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-32174680050198907402023-08-30T00:10:00.004+00:002023-08-30T00:10:51.251+00:00What does a 21st Century Exchange matching engine look like? <p><span style="font-family: arial;">A regulated exchange is a big complicated way to facilitate one thing – bringing buyers and sellers together to trade in a legally and regulatory compliant manner.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Behind that simple one line are a considerable number of other features that are required within the value chain (not necessarily within the same firm)</span></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">For CSD based equities, a delivery-versus-payment mechanism to ensure that no-one loses all of their stock or cash.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">For a derivative exchange a clearing mechanism that can calculate IM and VM and ensure member margin accounts are maintained to a sufficient balance</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Market surveillance to ensure bad actors are kept out of the market</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">FIX Connectivity for orders/executions</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">FIX Connectivity “drop-copy” for post-trade workflow</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Binary market data over UDP/Multicast for latency sensitive firms</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Integrations with market data vendors such as Activ, Refinitiv, Bloomberg and many more</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Co-location offering</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">KYC/AML/CFT processes to ensure regulatory compliance</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Persistent storage for instrument static data</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Persistent storage for member data</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Persistent storage for connectivity configuration data</span></li></ul><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">At the heart of it though is what is a very simple set of functions within a software application:</span></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Receive orders from member firms</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Add an Order to an OrderBook. That Order then does one of three things (potentially more than one sequentially)</span></li><ol><li><span style="font-family: arial;">executes in full</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">executes in part</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">rests on the order book</span></li></ol><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Manage the state of the order book</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Any execution must be notified back to the member firm that sent the order</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Any execution must be notified to market data recipients with the appropriate level of anonymity</span></li></ol><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8dnmPSu8-eXxC8QnD3MXH_5OpvL9aEl2QW7kOa4CO5xuh4kTArP9pnXxgumFJ_C-SrSrkP7sKcpJpFpdEtv4ghQyYFfIow9DdEsdy08slJD29nBCbt7pbcIxBWR2W6TAht0Lz6pNGvt4jDLHowK9KfgHZu1d8ZrMquVVhYdjpNsvFiJHhlhrbAwyBcC4/s498/how-hard.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="329" data-original-width="498" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8dnmPSu8-eXxC8QnD3MXH_5OpvL9aEl2QW7kOa4CO5xuh4kTArP9pnXxgumFJ_C-SrSrkP7sKcpJpFpdEtv4ghQyYFfIow9DdEsdy08slJD29nBCbt7pbcIxBWR2W6TAht0Lz6pNGvt4jDLHowK9KfgHZu1d8ZrMquVVhYdjpNsvFiJHhlhrbAwyBcC4/w474-h312/how-hard.gif" width="474" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">As a odd-and-ends project I decided to see how hard it could be. The parameters/constraints are:</span></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Implementation in Java using OpenJDK</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use a sensible number of threads (Client Simulator, Main, one thread per order book)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use of QuickFIX/J with FIX 4.4</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">No High Availability</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">No Disaster Recovery</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Write clean code – use annotations, enumerations, interfaces, constants, exceptions</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Write the code so that JavaDoc can execute to provide documentation for developers who look at this in the future.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Do not spend more than six days on this.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use MIT license and open-source the whole thing</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Use <a href="https://github.com/AlignmentSystems/MatchingEngine">https://github.com/AlignmentSystems/MatchingEngine</a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Build in client simulators such that orders & executions can be sent in.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Build a stub for market data, if possible use SBE-FIXP-SOFH for the market data implementation (start with TCP/IP unicast but again, if possible, switch to UDP/Multicast for the Transport)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Limit Orders only (I have promised myself I won't got into a market microstructure rant but unlike some exchanges I think there is an imperative to ethical behaviour in system architecture)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Simple partial fills as first implementation with order restatement and more realistic behaviour to follow</span></li></ul><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Let’s start from a blank piece of hardware. To encapsulate and isolate the matching engine from your existing environment we will use VirtualBox to create an instance of Ubuntu on which to develop the software. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Then download Eclipse, Gradle and QuickFIX.</span></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-server#1-overview</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">https://gradle.org/install/</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">https://quickfixj.org/downloads/index.html</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">https://github.com/AlignmentSystems/MatchingEngine</span></li></ul><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="428" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/29xMRRWLwEE" width="515" youtube-src-id="29xMRRWLwEE"></iframe></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Serious footnote PLEASE READ THIS....</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">To be clear, this is NOT a project to build a real-world matching engine. If you want one of those, there are numerous vendors in the space with whom I have worked and retain positive relationships.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This is also not, Clarkson jokes aside, a showcase for my ability to write Java. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This was a way to fill in some quiet time and work some parts of my brain that have not been in day-to-day use for a while.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Greenan Way, Doonfoot, Ayr KA7, UK55.4363484 -4.661118535.124125669428132 -39.817368500000015 75.748571130571861 30.495131500000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-52399883222926703212022-08-13T11:28:00.003+00:002022-08-13T11:28:54.391+00:00Farewell my old friend...<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAM8hdtsEc-laVQbghzRq8ARYNn_FBFhK1Ssi5A_Y3xMyupt8Xe3QhJnJL8botRftkAJcjnHNDmj9NanV8jbjpDConnWc3KCqAex9-x3-s7EGMeWaN21hIc2jkHypmFwLTVV4Ti8HLY-474RVyR138TgE4uuFvUnSK-n8kJH7HryT9J4oTPrLev7pQ/s1272/SnipImage.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="796" data-original-width="1272" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAM8hdtsEc-laVQbghzRq8ARYNn_FBFhK1Ssi5A_Y3xMyupt8Xe3QhJnJL8botRftkAJcjnHNDmj9NanV8jbjpDConnWc3KCqAex9-x3-s7EGMeWaN21hIc2jkHypmFwLTVV4Ti8HLY-474RVyR138TgE4uuFvUnSK-n8kJH7HryT9J4oTPrLev7pQ/w640-h400/SnipImage.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p>Sadly it was time to say goodbye a while back, but I kept the USB drivers around just in case...</p><p><br /></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Kyiv, Ukraine, 0200050.4501 30.523422.139866163821154 -4.6328500000000012 78.760333836178845 65.67965tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-58304479497170877282022-06-02T01:04:00.002+00:002022-06-02T01:04:19.288+00:00Fintech: Dignity in defeat<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Recently I met with a former client and friend for lunch. He has been working on a Joint Venture and for </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">various reasons, which are not relevant to this article, the investors have pulled the plug and are shutting it down.<span></span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt;">Over lunch we had a long discussion about this and I was deeply impressed by his commitment to the staff of the JV to assist them with finding new roles. Not once did he mention anything he was looking to do next, his entire focus was on assisting his team in securing suitable new positions.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt;">While many folks in fintech are “fintech bros” and are merely focussed on the series B, C, D, E etc. it was great to see such a selfless individual doing the right thing.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt;">So I paid for lunch, least I could do…</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt;">Safe travels!</span></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com1Kyiv, Ukraine, 0200050.4501 30.523422.139866163821154 -4.6328500000000012 78.760333836178845 65.67965tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-79927018637160554842022-04-11T03:50:00.007+00:002022-04-12T23:37:11.482+00:00Fintech Interview: Spence Maclean, Founder - Bond Auction<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eighth interview with interesting people within Fintech, this time Spence Maclean of <a href="https://bondauction.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">BondAuction</a>.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsxqoJcyA28BHQz1tw5tvLp4iyrWLMaH1xirj3MjyAL7_Zc9H3APFC2JbDUi_wn0miohvn8B_spqBcA6tf5CbsqNvcesfnUwrazHAiDkitAIug41H3Qq7oa9kNMCK_1l7zPyRto6L96lQPZiwu7cgwTJdyE05WiTX94iqxNVHw1BZUuOZhzu_CPKN-/s1024/Spence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="647" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsxqoJcyA28BHQz1tw5tvLp4iyrWLMaH1xirj3MjyAL7_Zc9H3APFC2JbDUi_wn0miohvn8B_spqBcA6tf5CbsqNvcesfnUwrazHAiDkitAIug41H3Qq7oa9kNMCK_1l7zPyRto6L96lQPZiwu7cgwTJdyE05WiTX94iqxNVHw1BZUuOZhzu_CPKN-/w405-h640/Spence.jpg" width="405" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Spencer Maclean is a Founder of BondAuction Ltd. The company was formed in 2021 after he left his role as the Global Head of Bond Syndicate for Standard Chartered Bank where he spent 11 years in both a syndicate role as well as running the DCM team for Europe and Americas. Spencer started his career at Credit Suisse in the late 1990s before moving to Deutsche Bank and lastly SCB. He executed transactions for clients from the Corporate, Financial, Sovereigns and Supranational sectors.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Who are you?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I started my Debt Capital Markets journey when I was at Credit Suisse. Back at the time when retention bonds where the only game in town really. So I was the new issues trader responsible for the positions in credits all the way down from triple A all the way down to single B.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Started to cut my teeth as a Syndicate manager on some of the triple A supranational names but quickly found my home in the Emerging Markets space.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Moved onto Deutsche Bank until the crash came and then moved briefly across to Credit Agricole. From there I ended up at my last shop, Standard Chartered. Very much a focus on Emerging Markets when I joined but within a couple of years my focus broadened and I ended up running the Debt Capital Markets team in Europe and the Americas. I left the syndicate desk behind for five years. Then I returned to the Syndicate Desk as the Global Head of Bond Syndicate. It was great to gain broad experience of different markets, different groups of issuers and dealing with clients both from the DCM relationship banking side of things and the cut and thrust of a Bond Syndicate desk.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I left Standard Chartered pretty much twelve months ago. I got together with some old colleagues and we formed Bond Auction. The experience that we had in those twenty plus years in DCM made us realise that very little had changed over that time. So when I started out as a bond trader bonds were held on retention. Three or four of you would take a proportionate share of a transaction and you had time to give bonds away prior to pricing and then you were left holding any residual positions.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Twenty years ago, It was the World Bank that came to us and said</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“We would like to have a new form of transaction, does anybody have an e-book builder?”</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Of course, all the banks put their hands up and said yes. The reality was that it was me frantically typing in orders from our sales force and other banks sales force into a spreadsheet and publishing it to a page. There was absolutely zero technology there at the time, although that transaction did fundamentally change the markets at that time: all orders were put into what they called a pot, we were all able to see them for the first time ever instead of just dealing with our individual sales forces. And the issuer decided they were going to choose where their bonds were going to, which investors were actually going to end up holding their paper.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That was quite an experience to be working on that very first trade. Of course, technology then came to address problems with solutions. We were going through reconciling simply using spreadsheets and getting on long reconciliation conference calls that would take a while to go through. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And then came the team from Ipreo with their book builder system and a reconciliation engine. Of course this eventually gathered a head of steam and sufficient momentum in Europe first, then across Asia and finally in the US. That lead to the markets becoming much faster and able to handle a greater number of transactions and a greater deal size. You only have to look at the last ten years where the average size has gone up from around $£4-5trn to around $10trn two years ago</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Electronification enabled larger appetite, larger number of players into the market. But it has really stopped there. We have seen some efforts in the last few years to allow investors to directly input orders into the books, that was met initially with some reluctance but is slowly starting to come together now.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>You have journey from being the poor soul sat in front of a spreadsheet to where you are now, you have seen the market changes first hand. What does the onwards trajectory look like?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I think as the markets continue to grow and the number of participants coming into the market grows it is important that we treat everyone in as fair a manner as possible. The MiFID allocation justification process goes some way to address that but it’s really far from a transparent process. The process is currently far too iterative, in the book-building process the complaints we hear from investors are: </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“If fair value is at X why on earth do you start marketing a transaction 30 or forty basis points wide?”. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We all know it’s not going to price at that level, issuers like to see a certain amount of oversubscription in the book, momentum is the way they achieve that. If you try and explain how the market handles and prices $10trn in debt to somebody that is not within the market and say “we change the price and we change the price and we keep going until eventually the momentum slows down and one or two people fall out”. Someone described it to me as “you read the tea leaves rather than do anything scientific” and the old adage in the market was “this is an art not a science”. That’s what I learnt on day one and it still holds true to this day.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I would think those words ought to ring alarm bells across the market, from the regulators point of view, from the buy-side where they are never able to reflect what they really want, where there is a book that is multiple times oversubscribed and in order to receive an allocation they want to receive they would be foolish if they reflected real appetite. It’s a very opaque process and it has been built upon wobbly foundations, more and more has been piled on top. It’s time to get together and draw a new process from a blank sheet of paper.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sir Alec Issigonis said “A camel is a horse designed by a committee” and that’s exactly the situation we are in at the moment. So there are one or two dominant players in the market that have some products that were addressing issues at the time. There had been a reluctance to actually integrate these. At the moment we are going through something of a boom where there are lots of platforms offering solutions to different questions. The attitude that prevails among them all is that they are very open, they want to collaborate, they don’t want to disintermediate, they are offering a piece of the puzzle, not all of the pieces of the puzzle. They want to come together with others and offer a broad solution across the market. And that is also very much the approach we take.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Can you summarise what Bond Auction does?</b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Bond Auction is a platform that allows an investor to directly input a bid (as opposed to an order), and they will receive an allotment (as opposed to an allocation). That allotment, for the first time, because it’s based upon the competitiveness of their bid, could receive a full allotment, a partial allotment or zero. So no complaints about an allocation, since it’s down to an investor to bid sharp enough. An issuer receives greater transparency on the appetite and demand that exists for their name on that particular trade. The syndicate desks for once can answer the question “what if”. The issuers always ask “what if I go a basis point tighter?”, at the moment the syndicate guys simply don’t know as there is imperfect information given in an order book. Now there is perfect information, because each bid carries a size and a price. Therefore, as an issuer and an underwriting bank you know who is going to receive an allotment if you have pricing parameters of X. And if you change to pricing parameters of Y you can see immediately the various outcomes that are open to you as an issuer.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Is this interaction iterated or is it a one-time process?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s a one-time process. Investors are frustrated with the iterations of the old model, where typically you would see four or more underwriters on a transaction. You would speak to your sales desk when a trade is announced, again when the IPTs go out, again when the price guidance goes out, when the revised price guidance goes out, when you are asked to confirm your orders, when you are asked to confirm your hedges, when you receive your allocation. Repeat those conversations with the other three underwriting sales desks and it’s a wonder that any investor gets anything done because they are constantly being bombarded with messages from all of the underwriting desks.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We have a process and a platform where the trades are announced, the syndicate and DCM teams are still involved in guiding the issuer to the best time and pricing parameters to attract bids in. The sales force will be involved initially to say “here is the trade, here are the parameters”. The investor can receive information from the banks and can still speak to their salespeople about what is going on in the secondary market, all of those conversations remain open. Then they can place a bid, they can amend it and change it up until the time the books close.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Upfront there is an announcement of when the book will close, there is a defined timeline for the operation of the book that is set by the issuer with advice from the underwriters. Now we know that very shortly after the book is closed the issuer is going to reach a decision on what terms they should be setting because they have this perfect information. They can move very quickly from closing the book to setting the terms to pricing a transaction. And as an investor I know that from a book closing at 11:30 I can expect pricing potentially before noon. There is no reason for it not to be that fast. Whereas at the moment, as an investor, having spoken to my sales person five, six or seven times during the course of the process I then start ringing them up asking “When are the allocations coming?”. The sales people speak to the syndicate desk and they are busy reconciling three hundred orders. Then we have to define the terms and execute all the hedges. It’s an archaic process that needs addressing and we have a platform that addresses concerns of all three of those market user groups and delivers benefits to all three of those market user groups.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Why do you think nobody has done this before?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The current process works. The banks make a good amount of money from this and they do not want to be disintermediated. We are not disintermediating the banks, instead we are bringing an efficiency tool for all of the participants. It’s difficult for any one of them to change a process that is, as far as they can see, working. The fact of the matter is that it may be working, but it is not transparent nor is it efficient. There are a lot of grumbles and a lot of complaints about this process from market participants. We have seen about five years ago with some efforts to allow investors to directly input their orders there has also been a change on the buy-side. They are now open to the fact they need to change, they now want seamless integration. So we are working on having integration with the buy-side OMS so that orders can flow straight from OMS. There are interoperability companies that will allow those workflows. All market users now want a seamless process, before they didn’t but now there is a change coming.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The legacy players existed, had a product that offered a solution and there were barriers built around these platforms, they did not want anyone coming in. The new entrants to the market are very happy to work with each other and the banks are slowly building their pieces of the jigsaw using these external companies. There’s an attitude change that has taken place.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We are seeing people are open to change. It’s a cruel irony, you probably know this better than I do, that in order to bring around change and speed things up you have to go through a tedious and incredibly slow on-boarding process.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>You have been a very successful Investment Banker at Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered. What made you want to flip out and go into the riskier world of fintech and start-ups?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Very candidly my role at Standard Chartered was restructured and so I found myself looking for what I was going to do for the next stage of my career. I had a decision to make: did I want to go back into the same world for which there were options out there for me. I guess there is safety for working for a company in terms of a salary, healthcare and all those wonderful things. There’s also the camaraderie of being in a team within an organisation and the fun of addressing challenges that exist in companies and of building better, stronger teams. Or you take the more adventurous path of a start-up? I thought about it and decided it was a great opportunity for me to look at a truly alternative career path. Having spent all of that time on Syndicate desks and DCM desks I had seen the frustration caused by this process, I had spoken to the investors, I had spoken to the issuers, I had experienced it myself. I thought, if I don’t do it now when am I ever going to do it? We set up the company last year, a few months after leaving Standard Chartered. We built our wireframes, we made the announcement in the Autumn of 2021 and set about calling old contacts and taking the temperature of the reception for this in the market. I am glad to say we had a strong positive reception across all three of the user groups. I cannot stress enough that we have three user groups of this platform and we want to deliver benefits for all three. We got that positive response from all three and so we continued. We are currently in the construction phase. We will be feature complete by the end of H1 2022. We have an early adopters group that are providing us with feedback as we roll-out different elements of the system to them. We are looking to be live with this before the end of 2022.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Pretty punchy timeline?!</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Yes! That was the feedback we got when we first announced, when we set out a timeline leading us into Q1 2022 people said “good luck, we don’t see anyone hitting those timelines”. In the New Year we pointed out we were running exactly to time and we laid out the timeline for the rest of this year. And I am glad to say we are still hitting our targets on time.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Moving into the adventurous world of fintech does mean you can move at a pace that would sometimes be frustrated in larger organisations. It is wonderfully uplifting when you can get things done! We are working with other partners, we have a development partner, we have had a user experience partner and everyone just works at a very different pace [to investment banking] and it’s really refreshing.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>There’s an Elvis song “A little less conversation (A little more action)”</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">(Laughs) Yes!</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>What would you say to people within a traditional banking world if they are looking at the new world of fintech?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What I would say to them (and this is probably the advice I needed to give myself at the time) is stop, pause and really think about what <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>is going on. Understand that there is more than one solution to a problem. Keep going, don’t let the frustrations of those inefficiencies of committee decision making hold you back in your desire to keep pushing things through because change is coming. A lot of people in traditional banking are very good, so it’s not so much advice as a boost and reassurance that they will get these things done. Keep heart, keep strong and you will get there in the end!</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Within the world of Fixed Income, what changes would you like to see in market structure?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I think of a couple of things: </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Having the open APIs to empower vendors to work with other solution providers. We are not fully there with everyone, so that needs to happen.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We need to see standardisation. That can come in in different places:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><ul><li><span style="font-family: arial;">standardisation around SLB or Green Bonds</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">standardisation around ESG ratings</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">standardisation around the structured data of bond transactions so they can be easily input and dealt with by the OMS.</span></li></ul><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That will lead to huge change. But again it’s a decision by a committee where people have such opposing views. The moment the Green Bond market started people wanted standardisation but it’s still difficult to compare apples to apples in that world.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This structured data piece I am referring to is that when issues are created everyone needs the same data to set up the instruments in their systems. This is way too manual at the moment. The current model is that an issue is announced, you may see that on Bloomberg or via email. Teams then manually input that data into their internal systems and make sure it fits in their systems. That is so backward in today’s $10trn market, to have somebody manually keying in data is just insane. It needs to be copied across and the only way you can do that is to have structured regularised data that comes in a certain format and we just don’t have that because people have differing views and opinions on it. That [structured regularised data] would truly benefit everyone.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>That does not sound like a big technology ask?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The technology ask is the easiest thing going [laughs]. It’s actually getting everyone to agree on the fields. There have been attempts at it. In the European IG space ICMA had 24 fields they would like to receive and then it changed to 21 fields. That is only for European IG, does not apply to supranational bonds nor to the EM space so it’s awkward.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For allocations the market practises differ between IG, EM and Supranational. Trying to get any consensus is back to “The Camel is a horse designed by a committee” problem. People want different things and it’s very, very difficult to coalesce to a standard. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>What will be the impact of the various Central Banks unwinding their QE policies? How will that drive innovation and change in primary and secondary bond markets?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The primary market has been the big player in town in terms of liquidity. All of the funds that are looking to purchase Fixed Income have had to come to the primary markets to get it which is why you see these multiple over-subscriptions as people chase getting liquidity. There is order inflation for sure<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> in these order books. If we start to see greater liquidity in the secondary market as Central Banks offload positions that could mean we start to see less primary issuance. If the interest rate environment is going up and some of the old very low coupon bonds are underperforming then there is an opportunity for issuers that don’t need that much debt to buy-back through open-market repurchases or tenders. There will be plenty of work to keep the syndicate desks and DCM bankers busy, it’s a question of where the end investor is able to find that liquidity best – is it in the secondary markets or does it remain in the primary market?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>I keep a list of Fixed Income Electronic Trading Venues <a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2014/12/fixed-income-trading-new-venues.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. Last year I speculated that we had perhaps reached “peak-venue” as a number closed. For your niche of primary market, do you think the number of venues will go up, down or remain constant? </b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The primary market is fairly minimal [in terms of firms on the list], I think there is capacity for more. Look at primary market book building – there is DirectBooks and IHS Markit. On the secondary market side of things does it really matter if they can all work together? How many GUIs and secondary market providers does a trading desk really have? Lots I believe is the answer.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Important Notice: </b></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Copyright Alignment Systems 2022 </b></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">The second paragraph (biography) was supplied by Bond Auction as was the picture of Spence. This interview was conducted remotely over a Zoom call and transcribed by Alignment Systems. No payment was asked for or received either way.</span><span style="text-align: start;"> </span></span></p></div>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Kyiv, Ukraine, 0200050.4501 30.523422.139866163821154 -4.6328500000000012 78.760333836178845 65.67965tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-77024887079552363702021-11-26T12:06:00.002+00:002021-11-26T12:06:22.728+00:00QuestDB<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A recommendation came in from a trusted source that QuestDB is worth evaluating. In their own words:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>"<span style="font-size: 15px;">QuestDB is a relational column-oriented database designed for time series and event data. It uses SQL with extensions for time series to assist with real-time analytics.</span>"</b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">No JDBC so not a drop-in replacement for one of the many databases that support JDBC. Does have a REST API, so I could imagine cobbling together something that exposes a subset of JDBC with a REST interface to the datastore.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Column store but don't have to work with the joyful, easy-to-understand constructs of k and q - it might catch on...</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVDgwmtaM5xvfzfFO_w-QorbDa_G3IPegrprfReWLMkxZ1UZAoNPO8pjH916USfqc9UK-Jd8BLRkeZfVJ9xsodoJRO1WAYDj-AShfGh930tDxOfICgv1Ul3gznMur_ZRg37fEQ1XPnVxY/s2048/QuestDB.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1950" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVDgwmtaM5xvfzfFO_w-QorbDa_G3IPegrprfReWLMkxZ1UZAoNPO8pjH916USfqc9UK-Jd8BLRkeZfVJ9xsodoJRO1WAYDj-AShfGh930tDxOfICgv1Ul3gznMur_ZRg37fEQ1XPnVxY/w610-h640/QuestDB.JPG" width="610" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-39747265861499193852021-11-26T03:50:00.005+00:002021-11-26T03:50:47.273+00:00Pyth.network. Crawl, walk, run...<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Having stood up a <a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2021/11/solana-hello-world.html">Solana client</a>, time to look at <a href="https://pyth.network/">Pyth.network</a>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">If done right, this will be a huge threat to the market data incumbents...</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfh2sfjI8Bn4bEAoP750pLFf7Xakxn_2Jd10KzeKD8VXKwAfyEv03CljN_nemF7sB0XhivOdN-611DCHAfllZ-7NkCrxIQg7F9ldj8hq2bIjDLHtWdLjxv2PRreNGEERILHtX8S0jPzcA/s2004/pyth.network.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1990" data-original-width="2004" height="636" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfh2sfjI8Bn4bEAoP750pLFf7Xakxn_2Jd10KzeKD8VXKwAfyEv03CljN_nemF7sB0XhivOdN-611DCHAfllZ-7NkCrxIQg7F9ldj8hq2bIjDLHtWdLjxv2PRreNGEERILHtX8S0jPzcA/w640-h636/pyth.network.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p><br /></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-89721523153406092332021-11-23T07:24:00.006+00:002021-11-23T07:26:02.752+00:00Solana - Hello World<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Rust language is on the up, memory safety and the buzz in the community are attractive when looking at long term investment in technology. And for a <a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/08/rust-fix-engine.html">better FIX engine</a>... </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">While looking at different DLT technologies <a href="https://solana.com">Solana</a> is interesting as it supports Rust alongside C and C++</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Looking at this alongside <a href="https://pyth.network">pyth.network</a> - see what market data distribution could look like within a decentralised model - no more "we need <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com">Bloomberg</a>, <a href="https://www.refinitiv.com/en">Refinitiv</a>, <a href="https://www.factset.com">FactSet</a>, <a href="https://www.wind.com.cn/en/data.html">Wind</a> etc..." simply head over to <a href="https://docs.pyth.network/consumers/client-libraries">https://docs.pyth.network/consumers/client-libraries</a> and start coding. Or pay some to do the legwork...</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And here's the Hello World for Solana on Ubuntu inside VirtualBox...</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4-hHpQuXJfujY27Vbq1Ubl7cL20LkbN7K4XYHi9wnYb1VES-I6kpXAsoP08awxrMDe5X5dvmSfsrZpk3FPYMeFgi8foR_a3Q_FcF65Nw_qqPdP732fVUh46t4SbR_lnSs1ITlcoFkg3E/s2048/image001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1987" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4-hHpQuXJfujY27Vbq1Ubl7cL20LkbN7K4XYHi9wnYb1VES-I6kpXAsoP08awxrMDe5X5dvmSfsrZpk3FPYMeFgi8foR_a3Q_FcF65Nw_qqPdP732fVUh46t4SbR_lnSs1ITlcoFkg3E/w620-h640/image001.jpg" width="620" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p><br /></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Aldermaston, Reading RG7 4PR, UK51.3632895 -1.141184423.053055663821155 -36.2974344 79.673523336178846 34.0150656tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-54514663124172280192021-10-22T11:30:00.001+00:002021-10-22T11:32:40.016+00:00Open Door Policy...<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For many years I have had an open door policy, if someone gets in touch and wants to talk I will spend an hour on the conversation. Some folks call this "pay-it-forward". I have always viewed it as good business.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">One person with whom I spent an initial hour attentively took notes of the meeting. A number of years later I saw he had moved jobs and I congratulated him. Shortly afterwards he sent this message:</span></p><p>Hi John, I have a notebook with advice people have given me over the years. Yours is my favourite. I follow it as a principle and live by it. Thank you for your constant support and friendship over the years. I would love to meet up when you are next in town.</p><p><span style="font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">The note is shown below...</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYo06eKss42WGgDQ9ujhlJyd5v16DwG8mYskVE1koqKyhWBISUc_P8cbzfti0h_ZAVuqEfwmrh6rbYOim1Hn7gZ2wUMXDd0OhQmPceIhAvtTO7bu3rZtaGMXsMRGIEyXZbKtWX7_pcag/s2016/IMG_5721.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYo06eKss42WGgDQ9ujhlJyd5v16DwG8mYskVE1koqKyhWBISUc_P8cbzfti0h_ZAVuqEfwmrh6rbYOim1Hn7gZ2wUMXDd0OhQmPceIhAvtTO7bu3rZtaGMXsMRGIEyXZbKtWX7_pcag/s16000/IMG_5721.jpeg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com05GHV+CMC RAF Mount Pleasant, Mount Pleasant FIQQ 1ZZ, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)-51.8214285 -58.4558491-80.131662336178849 -93.6120991 -23.511194663821158 -23.299599100000002tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-1017751996845236392021-06-18T05:49:00.000+00:002021-06-18T05:49:32.264+00:00Fintech Interview: Sean Bowen, CEO - Push Technology<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Seventh interview with interesting people within Fintech, this time Sean Bowen of <a href="https://www.pushtechnology.com" target="_blank">Push Technology</a>...<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtlmI6H5YyIDyP3GsJuCa-pG1QK3L-sRJVBciOyslAcDriS3EX_ykF48FO6sXEMYwkBH3pS6TsVTF1p7vS1rpJQxgtM5J6vv-VURDCmvoF64NhF_JtGDrQWNo-zQmfBSNXZ3QFnbUXln4/s1667/Combo+Head+Shots+Final+w+multiple+backgrounds.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1667" data-original-width="1521" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtlmI6H5YyIDyP3GsJuCa-pG1QK3L-sRJVBciOyslAcDriS3EX_ykF48FO6sXEMYwkBH3pS6TsVTF1p7vS1rpJQxgtM5J6vv-VURDCmvoF64NhF_JtGDrQWNo-zQmfBSNXZ3QFnbUXln4/s320/Combo+Head+Shots+Final+w+multiple+backgrounds.png" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sean drives the spirit of innovation at <a href="https://www.pushtechnology.com" target="_blank">Push Technology</a> with his market vision, business acumen, technical expertise, and unbounded energy. With his keen understanding of the requirements for real time data streaming technology to power mission-critical business applications, he founded and has invested his talent in leading <a href="https://www.pushtechnology.com" target="_blank">Push Technology</a> to serve the real time data delivery needs of markets worldwide. An entrepreneur at heart, Sean founded his first company, RFT Solutions, to develop business-essential, real time dashboards for operational banking systems. Prior to that he headed programs for development of bespoke financial reconciliation systems at Bond Technologies (now NorthPoint Solutions), a consultancy with domain knowledge in hedge fund operations and the technology applied to the tracking, reporting, valuation, and risk of complex portfolios for companies with AUM in excess of $1B. Sean’s programs comprised large, high-tech, consulting projects in the financial services sector for multinational clients including Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Earlier, Sean managed software development for ICMA (International Capital Market Association formerly the International Securities Market Association), which is internationally recognized as the preeminent business school for financial markets; and, he worked as a business analyst at the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy that offers a range of high-quality advisory, information, and consultancy services to public sector organizations. Prior to launching his high-tech career, Sean was a member of the Royal Air Force where he worked at Strike Command headquarters. Sean is a frequent and sought-after speaker at industry events.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">(Some discussion about my Fixed Income work and "<a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2014/12/fixed-income-trading-new-venues.html" target="_blank">the list</a>" lead to recollections about ABN Amro, where we join the conversation...) </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm;">I worked in Fixed Income myself for years, going way back to ABN Amro, doing trade support. In fact working with my old 1<sup>st</sup> team rugby captain.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm;"><b>Was that at 250 Bishopsgate?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm;">I had two stints there, I helped with the migration from the old office to 250 Bishopsgate. Second time was when the firm had already moved.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm;"><b>Who are you? <o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Sean Bowen. I left the Royal Air Force around 2000, I wanted to get into IT when I left. The first financial job I had was for ISMA. I was fortunate enough to get into a consultancy firm early and get thrown into the deep end.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Going back a little, I have a big sporting background, love challenges, hate losing. Consultancy was great as I was thrown big challenges regularly. I got dropped into a deep end on a number of occasions. I never liked to lose when given a challenge so I was successful in the projects I was given. ABN Amro was a great example, we got parachuted in there because they could not migrate the data internally prior to moving their offices to 250 Bishopsgate. We said we could do it, but it had to be in Excel because we only had two weeks. We managed to do the job in the two weeks and our client looked like a superstar at the time! It was a great project, great fun. Probably my first big challenge in the banking sector. That reconciliation project led to me and a colleague to build a VB6 reconciliation application that replaced their internal Sungard system. I became something of a reconciliation expert, I worked for Rabobank for a while on their big flagship STP program. I lived in Utrecht for a year doing that. And then, like all good consultancy practices, I came back to London and I was thrown into a completely different field. I was working on bond trading with ION Marketview, throw a bit of treasury in there as well for good measure. I managed to get quite a diverse set of skills from the financial markets, working with bonds, equities, front office and back office. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">While I was working with that consultancy firm I saw a bit of a gap in the market, probably two years too early. I was looking at how banks were tracking their data in real-time. When a bank does a big trade, it’s often with a bunch of counterparties and they were not getting the visibility in real-time on what trades were actually settled. So they were not able to put their money in the bank on an overnight deposit. I thought that was a bit of a gap and when I dug deeper into the topic I saw that banks were breaching bought stock and house limits. Putting real-time visibility onto that in the banking sector was the plan. But that was two years before the markets crashed and so two years before everyone was focusing on implementing it.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">It’s worth stating, that was what got me into examining this whole space. I had connected the back-end systems, trading systems and risk systems; but, we were still giving the data to the Executives using a web-page that was not very dynamic and not very scalable. As a result, I turned to the internet to see how we could solve the real-time, scalable data challenge for dashboards. Also for other markets, I was looking at other technologies around 2006. or example, in eGaming I saw that in-play betting was happening and I thought how are they going to make that work when they are not used to the throughput, scale and performance. It was a good time to launch Push Technology and solve the last mile piece. How do you deliver massive scale and massive throughput over the internet and still assure low-latency so people can have the most compelling experience.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Add into that I have played Rugby and Football for fun, that gives you some insight into the person I am.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>What firm do you work for?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I am the founder and CEO of Push Technology. We have a flagship product called Diffusion. Diffusion is an intelligent event-data platform which most everyone in eGaming knows as we have been with most of the big players for a number of years. We have transformed the whole market with in-play and how they do it. We have had some strong success in the financial markets as well, that has really blossomed in the last couple of years. Everything was compliance and risk for quite a few years, nothing was changing in the big financial houses and all the FinTech firms were nipping at their heels. Now they are out of that cycle and are seeking to transform what they are doing and to defend their market shares. As you know, there are a lot of systems that have been in banks for many, many years and they have not really changed. These systems require upgrading and extending out to get better access to their customer base.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Trading is a great example, I am sure you are aware of single-dealer ,multi-asset trading platforms. They were built primarily for corporations and banks to trade among themselves; but, now that’s getting opened up to the public in fact, looking at Consorsbank, they were one of the first firms to approach us to say that they wanted to get trade prices into their retail banking customers hands. And that’s happening more and more in the banking sector. It is no longer a matter of can you stream prices to a couple of thousand traders. Now, it is can you stream prices to a couple of hundred thousand people? Push Technology has been primed for that for years, we started out in the gaming space which was to me very similar to financial markets. Betting opportunities instead of trading opportunities where you are betting on sport rather than trading financial instruments, but you have prices that are changing in real-time and traders that want to trade on those prices.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Traders are trading much greater volumes – instead of a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand traders we were dealing with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of users. Sometimes even millions! The one difference is that the betting market is not as volatile as financial markets but it has its own scaling challenges that we had to meet – many people wanting to trade in real time. That was a great test of our product early on. Throw in that we have been pulled into a number of banks and interdealer brokers – we had three of the top five for a while before two of them merged.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We have been stretched with trading systems in banks with throughput and we have been stretched with scale of connections in gaming companies. Both have been excellent tests of our platform and really helped us to build something that now I am starting to see other markets want. They did not know it was possible.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We looked at the internet as the bottleneck and we did not follow traditional approaches to moving data. We had realised traditional approaches were hugely inefficient and we actually came to market with something unique and that has given us a competitive edge from day one. It’s quite funny that the key feature we are talking about is how everyone else moves messages like a Postman – they always deliver every message they are given, they never look inside the message, they just deliver. That’s a really inefficient way of moving data, especially over the internet, since quite often you don’t need to move the entire letter, you just need to move what has changed. We got inspiration early on from video and that is how we delivered our data platform. The way video works is that the very first frame you get has every pixel and the second frame is not every pixel, it’s only the delta, it’s just the pixels that need changing to convert the one frame into the next. We built our platform around that as a key concept. In the gaming space we found we were driving down the bandwidth required by 99% and that’s why we transformed the whole market, we were enabling customers to go from 20 betting opportunities per game of sport to 150 which was the entire market that was available then. We were able to deliver prices so quickly because we were very efficient and we weren’t flooding their network This meant we were able to handle point-by-point betting on a game of tennis which was impossible before.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Rolling forward into the banking sector, it’s worth saying that the banks were fairly efficient with how they moved data. However, we still brought huge efficiency to it but what we have done is realise that there are a number of products going around such as <a href="https://kafka.apache.org/">Kafka</a> that is phenomenal, everyone is adopting it. But it delivers a firehose that none of these systems were built to accommodate. We are finding outages and people are getting data they should not get. As you know, within financial markets not every piece of data can go everywhere. You certainly don’t want customers seeing other people’s data. There are certain instruments you cannot trade in certain territories, so having an ability to control that firehose and route data where you need it to go and stop it going where it should not go is becoming hugely important for us as well. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The product has really evolved over the years from the original highly performant, highly scalable piece of technology that hugely helped the gaming market to scale and financial markets to deliver trading systems over the internet to something you can pick up and integrate with back-end systems quickly and easily. Pressure on companies is building every year, to deliver more with less budget. Being able to hook into back-end systems that, in some cases, have not changed in years is one concern, another is that new systems are so fast old systems cannot keep up with them.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">How do you handle that throughput? By being able to put something that sits in-between, that gets data from these legacy platforms and controls the flow of data to highly performant messaging systems and enable people to change that data in-flight to meet the demands of what a client wants to consume. That’s a challenge we see quite often, back-end systems – if you want to change something in a Bank you have to wait three months, with Kafka people don’t want to change it as it rebalances the whole platform. You don’t really want to touch these back-end systems, but the data they are moving never matches what your client wants to consume. Being able to do data wrangling on the data in-flight and change it into a meaningful format that is ready for your applications and customers to consume is, we found, a very compelling part of what we have built.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">It’s amazing how, early on, everyone was all about delivery and now it’s all about data-wrangling and control of the flow of data.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>What do you do for Push?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Ah, interesting! Probably everything if you speak to half of the company. I have my fingers everywhere, whether it’s sales, marketing, finance, product. I think it’s important as a CEO to know every facet of the business, it’s very hard to lead if you don’t. I’m fortunate that I have been exposed to multiple parts of different industries so it has given me the tools to get involved and I also think it’s important when you are building a product and selling it into markets you have an overall view, not just a one-sided view of “I want to sell more” but “How do I sell more? What is needed in the product? How do I support a customer? What kind of service do I want to deliver to a customer?”.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I get my hands dirty half the week and the rest of the week I am managing, leading and performing my CEO duties. It’s not a quiet week and it certainly isn’t 9-to-5.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>What made you start Push?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I have had so many people say that to be a founder of a start-up is a huge risk. At the time it was, people said you must be brave to do it. I said no, probably stupid! I just didn’t think about it to be honest. I saw a gap in the market, a challenge I wanted to fix and I knew I could do it. And that’s what made me start the company. I saw a statistic that 1% of companies last ten years, so we are doing something right. In fact we are probably having our best ever year, right in the middle of a pandemic! It has been an interesting journey and now I think I would find it hard to work for someone else, I like the freedom of being the CEO and making the big decisions. I know that not everyone is comfortable with making difficult decisions but I quite enjoy it. I think I would be bored as well, working for someone else. It’s a million miles an hour at Push, everyone is on the same journey, we have built a fantastic culture and it’s an exciting place to work. I think working anywhere else would be difficult now.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>What has your personal journey been?</b><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I started playing semi-professional football and I had an injury. Everyone thought I was going to be a professional footballer. I come from the wrong side of the street in London, from Woolwich and Plumstead. Not an affluent are by any means and I had to fight my way out of there. Soccer felt like the way to go at the time. But I got injured and realised my career could be over at any time. I didn’t want to go back to school and study for A levels so I thought what could I do that would give me a similar level of training, knowledge and a leg-up in life while also experiencing life. And that’s what made me join the Royal Air Force. I think that what really made me do it was my parents telling me that there was no way I would ever do it! As you have probably worked out about me, I hate being told no! That was it, the point made, I am joining up. Unfortunately they civilianised the role, my role was switched to being a civilian and I didn’t want to go into another part of the RAF so I came out and got back into civilian life. It was a phenomenal experience for me, certainly changed my personality and the way I looked at life. The first time my parents met me after my Passing Out parade (the parade at the end of the basic training period) they said “where has our son gone? You have got manners!”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I would recommend it to any youngster that wants to grow-up in life, it’s a real shock to the system going through it and I certainly came out of it a lot better than I went in.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>What do you see going on in the world right now where people are gaining real commercial advantage from the products of your firm?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I don’t think it’s just my product in my firm. Let’s cover the big question which is affecting everyone - the pandemic. Working within banking you see that when there is volatility, it can be good and bad. This has been terrible for a lot of companies but has also been great for other companies that are remote working and offer other creative experiences that are more relevant to the world today. The pandemic has opened up opportunities for people. It has not been massively positive or negative for us yet. But, long term, I think it will be hugely positive for us because, as I mentioned earlier, we were focussing on how we could deliver data efficiently over the edge and deliver great performance at huge scale. With the pandemic everyone was sent home to work and so our office is now in our house with our dogs and kids going mad and that’s the new normal, rather than going into a building in London or wherever and performing my daily duties there. When I was in my office I had a dedicated network, with all my systems around me. Of course, everyone else was experiencing the same kind of work life. Now we are all working from home, on a shared network, with all of these systems that were just not built to be delivered over the internet at the scale and pressure the network is under today.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">There were some crazy statistics from the likes of Zoom about the adoption of video calls that would have absolutely hammered the network of all of these telcos and no surprise that there were a bunch of outages early on. It has led people to look at these systems now and see how they can re-architect them to work remotely. We are at the beginning of that journey at Push, we see some of these changes happening and we also see a bunch of companies really struggling as they cannot afford to make those changes yet. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">As time goes on it will get better and better for us, but I definitely think the whole work-from-home life is going to have a huge impact on our business. We are seeing it in other industries as well, we are obviously strong in gaming and finance but we are now seeing firms in other industries approach us to adopt our technology. And not just on-premise, cloud is getting a bigger push, pardon the pun. Not being in the gaming and finance space where people want these systems as close as possible to the source of data for latency requirements. When you get into other sectors latency is not so important, reliability and scalability and delivering data within time is important, just not at low-latency speeds. They are more than happy to go to the cloud so it’s a very different adoption model when you are trying to sell to those markets, very different product required, very different sales cycle required. It’s been interesting as this shift has happened in the world, what we have learned from it, what opportunities we have discovered from it.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">As the years go on, this is not going to go away anytime soon, we might have a vaccine now, but we know these viruses mutate and this will change the way we work forever. And I think that’s going to be positive for Push in a big way, just because of that whole data efficiency, scalability and performance play we have had for many years over the internet.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>Blockchain, distributed ledger – is that something you do?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We have had some people from the blockchain world come to us, wanting to use our technology, not for execution, more for streaming live prices. We have seen it a little, it might be one of those technology trends that is a great idea and will get traction in certain areas but not everywhere. Not to downplay it, it’s hugely valuable where people are using it.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The big one we are now seeing is the whole IoT market is starting to open up.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>I have done some work with MQTT, interesting world?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b> </b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">It’s funny, we have been working with IBM for years, they had massive success with MQ Series. They are hugely influential within MQTT and we have relationships with a number of their architects. They would always tell us that MQTT is hugely efficient, but we would say it’s not. We’d show them ours – we have just launched an MQTT plugin for Diffusion, so you don’t need to use our SDKs, just go straight to an MQTT device without any broker in-between. It’s great, it makes it really easy for anyone to pick up Diffusion if they don’t know it and if they have an MQTT device available. Whether that’s a mobile device or a sensor. We have our own SDK connected on our demonstrations internally, we built some metrics collectors years ago. We ran a collector to see how efficient Diffusion is versus MQTT and I think it was still over 80% more data efficient.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>The thing about MQTT is that the way it’s structured is very inefficient – the variable byte integer – it’s very inefficient. If you have an integer in your system you have to munge it down into the minimum number of bytes, pack it in, send it over the wire and then unpack it at the other end. It feels like a case study of Amdahl’s Law about premature optimisation. You have less data going down the wire but more compute required at the endpoints to handle the data. And one of the core points of IoT is that you have resource-constrained endpoints with a minimum of compute and memory. The broker has compute, so why do compute on the edge devices?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We have put most of our important functionality on the server. We do have the functionality for a client to send a delta message inbound which is unique to us. Again, we were looking at these sensors and thinking why would I want to send the whole payload again? It’s quite often a JSON payload, so when you have sent the names once you don’t need to send them again, just send the values that have changed. It all just seems very inefficient, so we put this on the client side and we have seen great efficiency compared to MQTT. People don’t want to get tied-in, which I understand, they want open-standards, open-source and be able to move freely. So I get the reason for adopting MQTT, but at the same time it is going to hinder your performance and scalability when you are trying to deal with mass scale and you want low latency. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>Even if you use MQTT people still use things like Screwdriver inside it – to me MQTT is more like a session protocol with <your payload here>! And so you have to use something else to describe your payload…<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">It was funny, I cannot share the name, but we sat down once with a firm and they said “if we just use MQTT do we get all those cool features you have?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We replied – “No! You are going to lose some of them. The ones on the client side you lose, since MQTT does not have it. You get the benefit of the plain MQTT server. Deltas – gone, reconnect – MQTT is not very good at that…”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">It’s <i>interesting</i> as you compare the two, but our job is to give options to the client, they can go down the MQTT route. I absolutely understand why they may want to go with open standards. But if they want the higher performing, much more data efficient, intelligent movement of data they can use our SDKs. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>Cloud - in use with your firm? Hype or real?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We have an on-prem and cloud solution. We are not a multi-tenant cloud, we do use Docker and Kubernetes and get around it that way. We have a cloud service that is hugely efficient compared to everyone out there, probably more performant. We are still building-up some of the services round the outside, but no-one out there has this data wrangling service on the cloud. It’s a great tool and we are eating our own dogfood. We are using it right now for a skunk works project internally that will be announced at some point. I think its hugely valuable for any company to use their own products and services. We are quite excited about the lessons learned and the new product we are creating.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Cloud is great for people who want to get to market quickly and without huge expenses. It’s not cheap, that’s a misnomer. As soon as you scale-up it becomes expensive. I don’t think it’s as cheap as cloud people portray! But it is a great way to get a product to market cheaply and quickly where you don’t have a big upfront cost. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>Where do you see technology impacting in the next five years on:<o:p></o:p></b></p><ol start="1" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;" type="a"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>You<o:p></o:p></b></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>Your firm<o:p></o:p></b></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>Wider market<o:p></o:p></b></li></ol><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Me personally? I have two very active kids, both very sporty. I have been working on the whole sports sensor thing, working with a firm, embedding our technology into theirs. Just a personal little project that I am enjoying. Seeing real-time statistics on athletes as they are playing. It’s a great thing for colleges over here. Think of COVID, it’s a big driver for colleges here to get the best athletes in and previously their only way to get students in was to watch them play or get a video. So I am loving some of the developments from our partner companies working with our technologies. Since I can see how that will impact my children.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">When I think about systems and solutions we use at home I get frustrated when they are not real-time. Or when there is lag or performance degradation. I am hoping more and more people adopt our product. Not just selfishly in that I want the company to do well, just that it’s a better experience for people. Everyone should have the same experience at home that they used to have in the office. The more and more our product gets developed outside of these low-latency type systems the more we will have that kind of experience.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">With regard to Push Technology, we are getting pulled into all sorts of markets, all different use-cases. And it’s hugely fun to be involved. We are very fortunate that the technology stack has changed, everything used to be REST based but with Kafka, Microservices and IoT everything seems to be going event-driven. And systems are now being re-architected to take advantage of that and that’s a huge opportunity for our company and we are seeing that in some of the deals we are closing. As I said, in the midst of the pandemic it’s our best year yet.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">On a bigger scale, there are so many cool technologies around. One thing I love about technology is that you do not progress at a steady pace, as technology gets better it just accelerates faster and faster. We have Quantum Computing coming around the corner next, which we are also starting to get involved with as well. You mentioned Blockchain, IoT, AI, Machine Learning… I could keep going, there are some fantastic new technologies that are coming around and changing the world and how we live. Just with this pandemic, think about the data that is now available in real-time and how quickly vaccines have been put together. Think of how long that would have taken ten years ago…<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">There is stuff that we don’t even know about today that will appear in the blink of an eye in five or ten years that will move things forward massively again. It’s a massively exciting time for technology. Products such as ours that can move data quickly, products like AI and Machine Learning that can analyse data quickly, are just going to accelerate a lot of possibilities for people.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>Fintech – is that how you describe your firm?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">There’s no doubt that we have a huge influence on financial services so you could say that. We are in with a bunch of trading platforms, back-end services, we have just got into wealth management with a huge bank. But this is bigger than finance. Like I said, we are getting pulled into all sorts of industries: shipping, retail, logistics, satellites…<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">It does have a big play in that fintech space and I find now a lot of fintechs are looking at this kind of technology and a number of banks have been looking at this for several years as a way of driving change much quicker in these organisations. But I would not want to pigeonhole us just as a fintech company, even though we have just won one award in fintech and are shortlisted for another! Other people may look at us as a fintech…<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>You think it [Push] is bigger than that?<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Massively scalable real-time event data is applicable to every industry. When I think about fintech, half of that word is financial services, the other half is technology.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>Go crazy – make some wild predictions about machine learning, AI, DLT, cloud, whatever!<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Cloud – the acceleration of people who want market data in the cloud. I still remember from years back, you would never dream of putting market data in the cloud, it would be inside the bank, controlled..<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b>TRIARCH!<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Exactly, there’s a name from the past! We have been doing some great work with a company called BCCG, we did a webinar recently on how you can have market data in the cloud and take away some problems.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">There is so much change coming so quickly. One you missed – AR. And VR. Another huge market that is trickling along that could do with a dose of Diffusion in the middle of it to make it all perform quickly. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">With regard to AI and ML, a lot of jobs are fortunately and unfortunately getting replaced by technology. This has massively driven down the costs of building and providing a service. And you can deliver a superior service. You still need people to make sure these processes are working. I think it will be interesting to see how the jobs market changes over the next few years. What sort of jobs are going to be the norm? One thing I say to my children is “Security”. One thing that will never go away if you are looking at computers will be “Security”. With a lot of jobs being automated the changes to the jobs market will be very interesting.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">IoT will accelerate – we’ve not really seen any of it yet. I remember all of the noise and right now, you can have a sensor in your fridge…<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">That’s not a surprise, people needed to build the devices first. I have seen how people are hooking them up, using technologies like REST, and I have seen how poor a lot of the services are. I love the fact that we are starting to get dragged into IoT and we will speed up that whole market as well. It will be interesting to see how that changes. I have been speaking to people about autonomous vehicles and connected car. All of them have been built for a few cars, not to scale. That will change and we will see a lot more IoT working at mass scale using platforms like ours.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Speaking to an expert in the industry we asked “when can autonomous vehicles come?” and he replied that “they can absolutely come today, but the problem of scale has not been solved”.</p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><div style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Important Notice: </b></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Copyright Alignment Systems 2021 </b></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 16px; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">The second paragraph (biography) was supplied by Push Technology as was the picture of Sean. This interview was conducted remotely over a Zoom call and transcribed by Alignment Systems. No payment was asked for or received either way.</span><span style="text-align: start;"> </span></span></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Gruinard Island, United Kingdom57.886838499999989 -5.467258800000000629.576604663821144 -40.6235088 86.197072336178834 29.6889912tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-17018349269393174352021-01-21T12:18:00.006+00:002021-01-21T12:18:56.671+00:00Fintech Interview: Kevin Mak, Co-Founder, Ironfly Technologies<p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sixth interview with interesting folks within Fintech, this one with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmakironfly/" target="_blank">Kevin Mak</a> of <a href="https://ironflytechnologies.com" target="_blank">Ironfly Technologies</a>.</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><a name='more'></a></span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Kevin Mak is the co-founder of Ironfly Technologies, a company established in 2013 specialising in data aggregation, analytics, and trading systems for buy-side firms.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Previously Kevin was an options trader for a London based market making firm, and subsequently the senior trader at an Asia focused long/short hedge fund trading global equities.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Kevin holds a Bachelor of Computer Engineering, a Master of Biomedical Engineering, and a Master of Finance.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0cxBxDPvaKmHy3jDH1Y8VMwyYhQLAyXHGZAmAH77v9lzyVaAmMXUvK92dwMkGddlFvlcbuVhFhBqtLeRON7FZIYrGd1u-9dFZIiodH0TdhBcuQHMVfNUnubAMWhkYxkGbXyABOIOmDA8/s1288/image001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1288" data-original-width="1204" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0cxBxDPvaKmHy3jDH1Y8VMwyYhQLAyXHGZAmAH77v9lzyVaAmMXUvK92dwMkGddlFvlcbuVhFhBqtLeRON7FZIYrGd1u-9dFZIiodH0TdhBcuQHMVfNUnubAMWhkYxkGbXyABOIOmDA8/w374-h400/image001.jpg" width="374" /></span></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Who are you?</span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I am Kevin Mak, the CEO of Ironfly Technologies.</span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What does your firm do?</span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We started about seven years ago. When I was working at a Hedge Fund in Hong Kong we used an EMS called Portware, now bought by FactSet.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">My background was not actually financial, I was an engineer, I grew up playing computer games. And then as a trader I would spend 12 hours a day staring at a screen and I just felt that the system needed to be better than spreadsheets. That was the genesis, the why, of Ironfly Technologies.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I get it, it’s difficult, there are lots of moving parts, lots of stuff under the hood. You are effectively mapping software to the messiness of the real world, different exchanges and it’s tricky. But, nonetheless so much of that effort goes into “that order has been routed, great now let’s find some weird exotic thing to customise for this customer”. I understand why that naturally happens but we try to keep focused on a philosophy of decent design - and by design I don’t mean “it looks pretty”. That aesthetic part is really a by-product from things being in the right place, the important things being big, the unimportant things being small and that sort of thing. But in general, we have much more of a design focussed way of building out that workflow and the system overall.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A lot of what we build ends up being very visual – “a picture is worth a thousand words”. How do you make spreadsheets better? That’s where all of the real-time visualisation of data came in. Ultimately this is about: “you have a lot of information, you have a bunch of work to do, how do you make that work for you?” That’s all about how you understand that information before you go and do something with it. And that’s where it all came from really, a bunch of nerds sitting around saying this should be better!</span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">You were at the sharp end of using trading technology from a bunch of different vendors and then decided to do it yourself. If you could go back to a younger version of yourself, what would you say to him?</span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That’s a good question! There are two things I would say. The first thing is – don’t do it! [laughs]. The second is, if you are dumb enough to go and do it anyway, then don’t stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop. You never know when things are going to work, when you will get that big client. It’s just that you don’t know - sometimes it’s about just hanging in there. Especially for us vendors, the types of people we work for, we have clients that have seen the product, not signed up initially and yet have now come back to us. They’ll will say “that we spoke to you when you were just three years in and we didn’t know if you would hang around… but you are seven years in now, so ok, you guys didn’t die, congratulations for surviving, we can now talk to you and let’s do business.”</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s just one of those things about this industry, flow begets flow, that’s the mentality.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Technology-wise we would not change a lot, our stack is pretty good and we have gone in the right direction. We would probably have made a couple of changes with how we handle market data. At the beginning we were a little overly optimistic about how simple market data could and should be – which it’s not [laughs]. So everything from Reuters feed to Bloomberg SAPI is a complete mess. Data should just come and it should just work, but no, it doesn’t and it’s hideously expensive.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Otherwise, going down the rabbit hole… It took me a little while to really identify what it is that we are really doing. You can say trading systems and that’s fine, but at least from an overall philosophical perspective, we are there as decision support. So how do we do that? How do we support you to make more decisions, faster decisions, better decisions? We don’t advise, we don’t say “you should buy this and sell that”, that’s what you have analysts for. With the information you already have, how can we communicate that back to you in the most effective, quickest way? That’s one of the things that’s very hard to articulate about our product. Here’s where we are different, that we focus on this as a core part of our DNA. We train our developers to think about this and applies to how we design the actual product. Yes we support FIX and algos, but once they are there in the system, we go back always to “how do people actually use this?”. It’s more about the design focus and if I was to change anything, I would say to myself to try and articulate this design thinking message earlier on. Rather than just saying we do trading systems as it’s harder to differentiate yourself in that respect</span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What do you do for the firm?</span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Answering that depends what building I am in - if it’s likely that the person who asked is going to understand capital markets then it’s a different answer to if I am at a dinner party and I need to be more interesting to them than saying I am a dentist.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I usually say “we take financial data and make it into real-time pretty pictures”, that’s the glib one-liner. It then leads to the next conversation – why do people need this in real-time, why do people need pretty pictures. And then you can jump into the why do we do that, that humans understand data in certain ways and spreadsheets are often not the right way. Even when you use spreadsheets you try and line them up, gets the fonts matching, get the numbers lined up so you can see from a size perspective how big a number is relative to the peer group before you even read the number. We explicitly do that, we generate that picture on-the-fly as the portfolio changes, as your orders change. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">How to make that a fun, dynamic, interesting conversation, depending on who that person is, that’s not always easy!</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Day-to-day what do I do for the firm? When we started we were all very technical, so for the first few years I was in amongst the code. These days I do that a lot less. Up until about three months ago I would have said it was about half of my time in the code. Now it’s probably down to about one-third. We are building out the engineering team, it’s bigger now so that really helps with transitioning that work off my plate.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The next phase will be, apart from all of the general management things, to focus more on becoming a lead generator myself. </span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">How do you hire?</span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">When we hire developers we focus on the underlying technical ability and skillset rather than ‘oh, you’re from finance, great’. Whenever we recruit we’ll receive CVs and recruiters may say “this person has ten years of Java experience in a bank”. That’s great, but we run a web application, so we don’t need that experience, we have maybe 5% of our codebase in Java. So currently we have to teach a lot of institutional finance to the developers we hire. That’s fine, you pick your poison and this allows us to do more fancier things on the technology side.</span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What made you join your current firm?</span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">My education was never geared to finance, I studied computer and biomedical engineering. I was more of a nerd than a finance guy. When I left University I found all of my old high school friends were telling me that they had joined big investment banks on $100,000 graduate salaries. I thought, well ok, you’re smarter than me but not two and a half times smarter than me, that’s not so cool [laughs]. So I went off and joined a market-maker, the only other people in finance that will not exclusively take law graduates or business people. Not knowing anything about finance helped in terms of having an idealism in the expectation of what systems should look like. But no, it’s just spreadsheets and more spreadsheets!</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The market making firm gave me a desk with eight monitors all with spreadsheets. If one of the cells was highlighted in yellow then maybe you want to click it! And that’s what you do all day. You would think, given the amount of money going the systems, they would spend a little money making it a little less error prone, more usable - but that never happened. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I relocated to Hong Kong and joined a Hedge Fund… same problem! At some stage I realised, I grumble about this three times a day so either put up or shut up. And meanwhile - not by ability but by attrition - I found myself moving up the ladder at the fund to the point where I had to sign off for things. And then I hired a couple of traders and needed to sign off for two new Portware logins – for HOW much? Is this in Hong Kong or US dollars? This is in US dollars? And they charge the broker side as well? </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Finally, I understood just how much vendors were charging for the system. I thought, I can calculate expected value. If I stay at this firm doing this job I can make X amount of money, which is pretty good, but if I go and do a different thing, set up a company and solve this problem by building a product. Well then I get to build a product, which I haven’t done before, and also the financial numbers back up that strategy. Even if there’s a one in four chance of making it work it’s a no-brainer. It would be irresponsible not to do it.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">When we started, fintech was not yet a commonly used term, so being a first-time entrepreneur I didn’t really know what to do. When you have been on the buy-side and you are leaving a firm, your sell-side brokers hear about it. So they all asked, “which fund are you going to?” They all assumed it would be a competitor but I said no, I am going to do this. And they all said “hey that sounds pretty cool, we hear people complaining about their systems all the time too.” Some said – “do you need money?” I thought “wait people just give you money??" This could work!</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We raised a little bit of money, from people within the industry, and got started. It wasn’t a big raise but it was enough to keep a small team going for a year-and-a-half. And that’s all we needed. </span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What do you see going on in the world right now where people are gaining real commercial advantage from the product/services of your firm?</span></span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I could point to us having better technology and workflow but people reading may fall asleep. Right now people get the most benefit from us because I happen to have done what they do before [traded] and I have spent a lot of time training up the people who are supporting our clients. We can read between the lines when a trader, portfolio manager or analyst asks a question about the software or says “we need a thing”. One of the issues we had when we were talking to Portware - and everyone has the same problems with vendors - is that typically your account manager or front line person, if they have not done it before, they can’t be left with just “hey there is something weird with the system, I’ll leave you to look into it”. This lets us deal with it faster, rather than saying that “we will see what it is and investigate, or that it’s a weird FIX message, let’s check with the FIX network people” and then it’s three hours before you get an actual answer.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I am hesitant to say this, as while we scale it naturally becomes more like a big firm and you have the processes, controls and the systems and so we might lose some of that direct expertise. But, at this stage, if I am being very genuine, that’s the actual answer – if a client takes to us, they don’t need to talk to us a lot. We’ll listen, get it and get it done for them.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Having said that – the product is really good too!</span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Blockchain / Distributed ledger technology – in use with your firm? Hype or real?</span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s not something we work with directly, but at the moment we are working on a project that touches on that field. We are in the early stages of talking to some exchanges about some work in that area.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The best way I can put this is that blockchain is a fantastic solution that were all trying to find a problem for.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It can definitely be there, but in many implementations it’s used more as a database. In which case, why? Just use a database!</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For me the key will be in primary markets - primary market listings - to start being put on smart contracts. Right now we have some smart contracts as proxies for swaps, which can synthetically mirror existing stocks. But when primary markets start using these things in earnest that will be very cool, since then we will have a whole new class of open assets that can be traded anywhere in anyway. You won’t have to pay millions to list on an exchange. You will still have those guys around as some larger listings will want the prestige of listing on a traditional exchange such as NYSE or Nasdaq. But someone who wants to raise money to go from one pizza shop to ten pizza shops, that will be a whole new thing, traded on a very tiny exchange, there’s no physical infrastructure needed. I definitely see that happening, I hope in the next few years.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I feel very strongly about this as it breaks not a quite a monopoly but removes excesses and inefficiencies with the traditional exchanges within a heavily regulated system. That system needs to stay, but there is scope for smaller players to do smaller things around it. I look at this very keenly as ultimately we are asset agnostic, yes we do a lot of exchange listed products as that’s where the demand is right now. But once these new assets start coming in, I fully expect we will start plugging them into our platform. So the same interface for trading your BHP, CBA, APPL, your crypto all in once centralised system on your desktop.</span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Cloud - in use with your firm? Hype or real?</span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Very much real. We deploy using Docker, so we run containerised instances of the code for each of our clients. , Most of the time we run and maintain it but the client can also run it themselves. You can run it on AWS, IBM, Azure, whatever cloud service you want. Or we can deploy to a client’s own datacentre. For some of our clients with their own datacentres we just deploy to their datacentre and we can manage it remotely.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We offer a browser based front end and a fat-client, the application is really just a repackaging of the chromium engine. It’s a little like OpenFin in that regard.</span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Where do you see technology impacting in the next five years on:<br />You<br />Your firm<br />Wider market</span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Me personally, I never buy the latest phone. I like to buy the new version of last year’s generation. The reason why is that I have a paranoid mind – have you ever heard the saying “two is one and one is none”? I like to have backups of everything, I always have two phones. I don’t carry them both with me but I have one from a year and one from the previous year.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Technology wise I love seeing new stuff come to market, not because I will rush out to buy it, but because that will be the normal thing in two years’ time. That’s why I love seeing more computing power, whether on mobile or desktop or wherever as that ultimately allows us to do more as that technology will trickle down in two years’ time to the mass market. And for us as software guys, more compute means we can do more cool things. A lot of the time we are hampered by poor internet connections or bad laptops that don’t last very long and all of that is going to change. I am always excited by that.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Things become better when tools that a very specific industry uses become accessible to everyone. A lot of the time the way I view it is that a lot of financial management products may bamboozle a user. I say that alternative assets is anything my Grandmother does not understand. A short-sell? She doesn’t understand that, so it’s an alternative asset. One way is to educate people, another way is to make it more safe, simple and accessible. And that is what we do for the institutional side of things. And there’s no reason why, as our tools become better, people cannot do their own portfolio rebalancing or understand the risks if they are, for example, highly exposed to US Technology stocks. These are analysis tools that we are giving to professional traders now but there’s no reason why in some guise, whether we do it or someone else does it, these tools should really trickle down to everybody else. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And that is the sort of stuff that I think is more game changing.</span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Go crazy – make some wild predictions about machine learning, AI, DLT, cloud, whatever</span></span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A couple of years back we experimented with a neural network. Very simple, just tensor flow, a logistical regression neural network that we used to experiment with a data set from a large asset manager in Japan where they were doing a couple of thousand trades per day. We posed the question – is there any discernible information that I can pull out from this data set to suggest that some brokers are better than other brokers when it comes to trading Japanese stocks? Short answer (spoiler alert) yes, there is. We got to predictive accuracy at a high 60% - much better than chance, which is great. But then – now what? And what we found is that the effort taken on the analysis was only the beginning, and that the productisation to assist in decision support for a particular order would be the real value – so if you were trading a specific stock then the analysis might suggest to use a particular variety of a VWAP algo in order to get an optimal outcome.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So, the technology is there, but there’s a lot of hype and in most cases it’s a lot more work than people think it will be.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><div style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Important Notice: </b></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Copyright Alignment Systems 2021 </b></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">The second paragraph (biography) was supplied by Ironfly Technologies as was the picture of Kevin Mak. This interview was conducted remotely over a Zoom call and transcribed by Alignment Systems. No payment was asked for or received either way.</span><span style="text-align: start;"> </span></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Woomera SA 5720, Australia-31.1656389 136.8192607-59.475872736178843 101.6630107 -2.8554050638211557 171.9755107tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-66759152109642039562020-12-21T03:25:00.001+00:002020-12-21T03:25:28.982+00:002020 at Alignment Systems - catch-up on content you may have missed...<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Catch-up on content you may have missed during 2020...<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/03/meta-programming-fix-orchestra.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Meta-Programming & FIX Orchestra</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/05/shakti-replacement-for-kdb-and-mqtt.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Shakti - replacement for kdb+ ? And MQTT</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/07/mqtt-versus-sbe-fight.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">MQTT versus SBE : Fight!</span></a></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/07/fintech-why-you-need-thought-leadership.html">Fintech: Why you need thought leadership, not content-light marketin</a>g</span></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/08/why-i-love-apache-velocity.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Why I love Apache Velocity</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/09/fintech-explainer-pricing.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech Explainer: Pricing</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/09/fintech-explainer-pricing-part-two.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech Explainer: Pricing (part two)</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/09/fintech-explainer-what-is-smart-order.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech explainer: What is a smart order router?</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/09/code-that-writes-code-creating-kdb-q.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Code that writes code (creating kdb+ q and Java from XML and XSD)</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/09/meta-programming-code-that-writes-code.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Meta-Programming == code that writes code (creating Java code from XML and XSD)</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/10/fintech-explainer-why-your-fintech-is.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech explainer: Why your fintech is not twitter</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/10/fintech-forget-mvp-mcp-is-what-your.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech: Forget MVP, MCP is what your would-be clients want...</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/11/fintech-interview-thomas-kim-ceo.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech Interview: Thomas Kim - CEO, Enfusion</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/11/fintech-interview-andy-mahoney-managing.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech Interview: Andy Mahoney, Managing Director UK, FlexTrade</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/11/fintech-interview-matthew-reid-product.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech Interview: Matthew Reid, Product Manager, SimCorp</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/12/fintech-interview-santiago-braje-ceo.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech Interview: Santiago Braje, CEO, Katana Labs</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/12/fintech-interview-jean-philippe-male.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech Interview: Jean-Philippe Malé, CEO, BidFX</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2020/12/john-greenan-joins-fix-global-technical.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">John Greenan joins FIX Global Technical Committee Governance Board</span></a></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And a couple of gifts that keep giving...</span></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2014/12/fixed-income-trading-new-venues.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fixed Income Trading: New venues ( How many Fixed Income trading venues are there? )</span></a></p><p><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2014/03/whats-difference-between-ems-and-oms.html"><span style="font-family: arial;">What's the difference between an EMS and an OMS?</span></a></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-46069238931179304772020-12-17T15:33:00.001+00:002020-12-17T15:33:50.448+00:00John Greenan joins FIX Global Technical Committee Governance Board <p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com">Alignment Systems</a> is delighted to announce that our CEO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/johngreenan/">John Greenan</a>, has joined the <a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/">FIX</a> <a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/groups/gtc/">Global Technical Committee</a> Governance Board.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">During the nomination process Greenan commented:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><i>"Trading has substantially moved from “human-in-the-loop” to algorithmic. FIX must recognise this trend and ensure that we are well positioned for future technology. </i></b></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><i>Interoperability with, for example, <a href="https://www.isda.org/2019/10/14/isda-common-domain-model/">ISDA CDM</a> can bring substantial benefits. <a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/standards/fix-orchestra/">FIX Orchestra </a>can create massive industry wide cost savings. I want to help bring this vision to execution."</i></b></span></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Highgate, London, UK51.5717035 -0.150124123.261469663821153 -35.3063741 79.881937336178851 35.0061259tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-90383761130144784332020-12-14T09:52:00.005+00:002020-12-14T10:02:21.476+00:00Fintech Interview: Jean-Philippe Malé, CEO, BidFX<div><span style="font-family: arial;">Fifth interview with interesting folks within Fintech, this one with </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-philippe-malé/">Jean-Philippe Malé</a> of <a href="https://www.bidfx.com">BidFX</a>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>Jean-Philippe is the CEO of BidFX, Singapore Exchange’s subsidiary focused on providing solutions to the Foreign Exchange market.<br /></span><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;">Prior to this, Jean-Philippe was Regional Manager EMEA at TradingScreen and CEO of Galaxy, TradingScreen’s Multilateral Trading Facility focusing on the European bond market. <br /></span><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span>From 2004 to 2011, he was based in London and New York where he served as Global Head of Products. He worked directly with upper-level management to coordinate business development efforts and implement the first multi-asset class Execution Management System. Jean-Philippe holds a Bachelor of Science in finance and computer engineering from Institut d’Informatique d’Entreprise and a Master’s in project management from Université du Québec in 2003.</span> Jean-Philippe is the CEO of BidFX, Singapore Exchange’s subsidiary focused on providing solutions to the Foreign Exchange market.<br /></span></div><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;">Prior to this, Jean-Philippe was Regional Manager EMEA at TradingScreen and CEO of Galaxy, TradingScreen’s Multilateral Trading Facility focusing on the European bond market. <br /></span><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;">From 2004 to 2011, he was based in London and New York where he served as Global Head of Products. He worked directly with upper-level management to coordinate business development efforts and implement the first multi-asset class Execution Management System. <br /></span><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;">Jean-Philippe holds a Bachelor of Science in finance and computer engineering from Institut d’Informatique d’Entreprise and a Master’s in project management from Université du Québec in 2003.</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoEigLuUaYctWK8oM5zp0IjCa6MY35VuxFctQ2sJY4qyuGO1229vwkHo8jQTAqKjNakre4MjcG07EEsGwh_pEYTsQHt4TKitSAbmBbCahhrQeWJNGYj6RtYWSIEgfYYOtkgkucQsYa2sE/s300/Jean-Philippe+Male%25CC%2581_BidFX+-+Grey.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoEigLuUaYctWK8oM5zp0IjCa6MY35VuxFctQ2sJY4qyuGO1229vwkHo8jQTAqKjNakre4MjcG07EEsGwh_pEYTsQHt4TKitSAbmBbCahhrQeWJNGYj6RtYWSIEgfYYOtkgkucQsYa2sE/s0/Jean-Philippe+Male%25CC%2581_BidFX+-+Grey.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Who are you?</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">Jean-Philippe Malé, I am the CEO of BidFX. In a very odd way I am the co-founder of this organisation, given that BidFX was founded internally within TradingScreen. I can proudly say that our team created BidFX within a larger organisation.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Which firm do you work for? </span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; text-align: justify;">What we do, we provide a cutting-edge set of Foreign Exchange (FX) execution tools to institutional investors. The company is global, we really started globally on day one: Singapore, London and New-York. We have expanded since then, I cannot believe how quickly we have grown. When you have a great team and arguably a bit of luck!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We started with five or six people and we are now approaching 100, which is scary [laughs].<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">What does your firm do?</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We started in 2013, incubated within TradingScreen and we looked at the state of the market. We saw quite a few new platforms starting out, they were all based upon speed and the thesis that the FX market will turn into a typical exchange-like trading model where most transactions will be done on an anonymous basis with some kind of credit intermediary in the middle that will facilitate transactions post-trade. We took a different approach and it ended up being a good bet for us in terms of our business model. We listened to some of our larger clients and we realised they actually valued relationships. Of course, the quality of the price is very, very important. But they value the relationship more than they value anonymous access to the market and liquidity. So we built BidFX on top of these core principles: <o:p></o:p></span></p><ul style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pure technology without price modification<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Access to a very broad range of relationship-based liquidity providers which may be anonymous trading venues if you want to have access to them as well<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul><p class="MsoListParagraph" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Our clients want to know and control the sources of liquidity that they tap into. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We really built the company from those principles. And to this day we stick to these principles and the promise of any FX instrument, any source of liquidity, any negotiation protocol – all delivered as a technology provider.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">What do you do for that firm?</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In terms of what I do, that has changed, a lot, over the years. For those who have created a business from scratch, whether you do that within a large organisation or whether you do it on your own, the crux of it is that you start out by doing everything. Everything, whether that’s taking out the garbage, taking to clients or doing some coding yourself. So what I do has changed a lot, now I would say my role is closer to a CEO role!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I manage the strategy, the vision and even more importantly, building and managing a team of very successful individuals. Making sure we are ahead of what is coming to use in terms of market changes. Animating a team who will navigate through this change. One of coaches I used to have in London used to say that there’s only one thing in life which is absolutely for sure and that is that things are going to change. Whether you are ready for it, to embrace it and accept it or if you want to stick to your guns and just hope that it’s not going to happen. You may be correct for a certain period of time but it’s going to change, so my job as a CEO is to make sure we assemble a good team to accept that change and get the best out of it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">What made you join your current firm, why spin out from TradingScreen?</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We (re)started FX back in 2013 and that was 5 to 10% of my time. We had other projects in-flight at the time, I was creating a Fixed-Income platform back at that time, well, multiple Fixed-Income platforms actually.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Back in the summer of 2016 we [TradingScreen] had a change of CEO. Pierre [<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierre-schroeder/">Schroeder</a>], the new CEO had been on the board for a few years and knew the company really well. He looked at what we had done [in the FX group] and declared it was a good example of a successful project which could be spin-off from the rest of the group. The decision was made at a management offsite a few weeks after. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That sounded like a very exciting challenge. I had indeed experience creating and managing global teams and strategy, but I had never had to raise capital. We formally created BidFX in January 2017. We found the name at a pub around <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Holborn,+London,+UK/">Holborn</a><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="text-decoration: underline;">*</span>, I won’t give you all the other names. But I couldn’t believe that the company name and URL were not already taken. We jumped on it and bought it and all the associated URLs which we may use in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That’s really the genesis of BidFX.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">[Author’s note: I recommend the <a href="https://www.samuelsmithsbrewery.co.uk/">Lyceum Tavern</a>]<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">What has your journey looked like from starting your career to here?</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I studied Computer Science and Financial Markets back at University and I did a masters degree in Canada. It’s a long story but at the same time it does feel like yesterday…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The crux of it was being curious, wanting to explore things I had never done before. That’s one of the traits of my personality, at some point in time I have to change and do something else. I studied in Paris, France and in Canada and then I went on a trip to New York where I met the team at TradingScreen. I then joined the firm, three weeks later in London. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That’s taught me a lot of things over my career, at the end of the day we are all very similar across cultures and religions. In the markets, at this level we are all very curious individuals, passionate about what we do. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">When I joined TradingScreen we were around 35 globally. A very small team, we worked really hard and many of us are still in the EMS industry today, having various senior positions. We ended up creating an industry in the early 2000s. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There were a few interesting companies before that, who remembers <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GL_Trade">GL Trade</a>? They had fantastic technology if they had managed to make the right turn at the right moment they would have become the Bloomberg of this world. But now I think few people remember the name.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It [GL Trade] was an amazing company, if you look at what they had achieved in the early 2000s it was very impressive, most banks and brokers were using them, they had connectivity to all the markets, they had a really good technology stack, considering that the firm was created in 87. It’s easy to say in hindsight but taking the right turn at the right time could have transformed the company. The company hasn’t disappeared, it’s just part of a larger group and the branding has changed, I don’t know how many banks/brokers are still using it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">What do you see going on in the world right now where people are gaining real commercial advantage from the product/services of your firm?</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A significant part of our customer base includes the most sophisticated hedge funds in the world. We have indeed a strong expertise and brand within the buy-side community who uses our technology to improve their access to liquidity. These clients are very analytical in their decision making process and care less about brand which obviously came after a few years. They care about one thing at the end of the day which is their [clients’] P&L.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We have been selected as the FX technology partner by many large funds which is a great testimony to the value of the service we are offering the market. Our technology can support all currencies but adds even more value on less liquid products such as restricted currencies often traded as NDF.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As the number of commercial transactions taking place between currencies in Asia increases and the speculative investors in Asian currencies are also increasing in volume there will be new marketplaces created in Asia for FX. More transparency, especially for restricted currencies, and BidFX will play a big role in these changes. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Blockchain / Distributed ledger technology – in use with your firm? Hype or real?</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We don’t use DLT technologies ourselves. In a live trading environment these technologies don’t play a role yet. However maybe we could see something developing in the next few years. So far it’s more focused on post-trade processes. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At some point <a href="https://blog.alignment-systems.com/2015/02/buy-side-trading-after-execution.html">you said who cares about post-trade reconciliation</a>, it’s all done in real-time with FIX…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But we are not quite at that stage yet, so optimising the post-trade reconciliation aspect is still quite relevant, DLT and Blockchain can play a big role in reducing costs in this space.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We [BidFX] are not using it but if I take a step back, in the larger group of SGX, some departments use this kind of technologies. <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/sgx-completes-pilot-digital-bond-issuance-for-olam">Recently we announced a new bond issuance using DLT</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Cloud - in use with your firm? Hype or real?</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Real! In our space quite a few people are confused by this term. BidFX is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider which also operates a global private cloud. We build our own infrastructure and run it in well-known secure datacentres around the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We also use public clouds on top of our own infrastructure to perform certain functions. It allows us to deploy proximity datacentres in non-core FX hubs and therefore scale in a cost efficient way.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Where do you see technology impacting in the next five years on:</span></b><ol start="1" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;" type="a"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">You</span></b></li></ol><ol start="1" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;" type="a"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Your firm</span></b></li></ol><ol start="1" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;" type="a"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Wider market</span></b></li></ol></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Everything we do is via technology, in some countries right now we are not even allowed to see each other face-to-face, so technology is interfacing human relationships. I am in Singapore, you’re in another town. Before 2020, I had never used video conferencing for five or six hours per day, every day. We had lost the human touch of what it means to work in an organisation during the lock-down phase. Part of my job is anticipating what will happen in the future, to prepare my team and structure my team to embrace that change. I don’t think in my entire career we have seen a change of the magnitude of what we have seen in 2020 in the way we work. How will the workplace change? How do you keep a company culture? How do you keep people productive?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech – is that how you describe your firm?</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Yes. I like the sound of this word, but we have been in this space for such a long time, long before it became a buzzword. We are in a very niche market; the mass market does not know what we do. Fintech has allowed the masses to put a word on a concept that has been there for decades.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Are we a fintech? Absolutely we are a fintech!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Go crazy – make some wild predictions about machine learning, AI, DLT, cloud, whatever</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">If you push the envelope further from where we are now and the concept of an office disappears and everybody works from home. This is going to be a radical change. for the last hundred years or more people have congregated in cities, for example, in the building I am in right now there are probably 4,000 desks, people work together, improving productivity as a result. But what if we find another way of working? Do you need to travel for work? The people that find a good way of keeping their team productive, will produce a service that will be way cheaper than you can produce by maintaining an office and paying people in cities where wages are much higher than people really need. If 60% of your salary goes in rent what’s the point [of living and working in those cities]?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Prediction: A lot more companies will find ways to make people who have never met productive and therefore be 100% virtual. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The people that will benefit from DLT are the people that run ledgers such as banks and central banks, having some of the biggest ledgers out there. But how do you get these firms to embrace this technology because it will mean flipping the bank upside down, changing everything: processes, security and everything that they know today. How do you implement that change within a bank? Many banks have their name associated with a DLT or blockchain. Although there are differences the terms are used in a similar fashion. What I have seen is that although lots of banks have started these types of projects, they do so in a carved-out way so it does not impact their core business. The old processes may be expensive and slow but they are working.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Prediction: these technologies will be embraced by a new generation of banks, more than an existing bank.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p></div>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Easter Island, Valparaíso, Chile-27.112723 -109.3496865-55.422956836178841 -144.50593650000002 1.1975108361788465 -74.1934365tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-66561724591802705372020-12-11T15:08:00.000+00:002020-12-11T15:45:08.347+00:00Fintech Interview: Santiago Braje, CEO, Katana Labs<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fourth interview with people within Fintech, this one with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiagobraje/">Santiago Braje</a> of <a href="https://www.katanalabs.io">Katana Labs</a>.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Santiago Braje has over 20 years of experience in finance, having worked extensively in private and public credit markets. He began his career in corporate finance at Societe Generale and Citigroup in Argentina. He joined ING Financial Markets London in 2005 and became a Managing Director in 2009. At ING, he led emerging markets and structured credit trading before taking responsibility for all credit trading globally. He pioneered the application of data science in </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">hedging strategies and market-making and in 2017 started Katana as an internal project. In November 2019 he left ING as founder and CEO of Katana Labs, an independent fintech company.</span></span></p><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Mr Braje holds a BA in Economics from University of Buenos Aires, an MSc in Economics from Torcuato Di Tella University and an MSc in Operational Research from the London School of Economics and Political Science.</span></div><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAAEfNiS8uL5qs1Afp4NZ7pEkLGpEfGFfbGJUkP4uba8TO9COGzc3y41SdNg2WSzclGKyZ3IeLiLC0cjfur_EH7i7ysaoUGWO-UGP3lEVMmsSp3HTthkPhCtxhwKWkK8r5a41H7tBD9J0/s1946/Santiago.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1615" data-original-width="1946" height="531" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAAEfNiS8uL5qs1Afp4NZ7pEkLGpEfGFfbGJUkP4uba8TO9COGzc3y41SdNg2WSzclGKyZ3IeLiLC0cjfur_EH7i7ysaoUGWO-UGP3lEVMmsSp3HTthkPhCtxhwKWkK8r5a41H7tBD9J0/w640-h531/Santiago.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Who are you?</span></span></h3><div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I am Santiago Braje. My background is in banking and finance from when I started my career. My family was involved in finance, I grew up within a family where my Father owned a car loan company in Argentina, he was the second generation running the firm. So I was exposed to credit from a young age, my first actual paying job was to work with my Father in the office. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I then studied Economics at University, went into banking in Argentina with Societe Generale initially and then quickly moved to Citi. I relocated to London to study for a Masters degree in Operational Research after which I relocated back to Argentina and worked with Citi again. I had a few more years with Citi and then had my first short experience as an entrepreneur, I founded a consulting business with some colleagues from Citi to work on debt restructuring projects. As there were so many crises in Argentina, this was the one around 2002. Virtually all companies, apart from commodities exporters, were in trouble with their debts so all banks were heavily involved in debt restructuring. I worked on both the bank and debtor side of the business.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">After that I came to London to work for ING in the Credit Trading Business. I started in what was called “Exotic and Illiquid” at the time. Over time I had several different roles within Credit and Fixed Income, over the full spectrum from of liquidity to the illiquid extremes of structured derivatives, leveraged notes and those sorts of products. As I moved up the ranks I took on more responsibility, in 2009 I started looking after the flow business. By the time I left last year [2019] I was running the Credit Trading business globally.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Last year I left to found Katana Labs. Katana Labs is actually a company that started as a project within ING</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Katana Labs combines what have been my two main professional interests: finance, in particular fixed income and modelling and decision-making tools. How do you make decisions? What information do you use? How do you put a framework around it? How do you model the world within your decision space? How does this help you make better decisions? Not just in terms of automating things but in providing better insights. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Originally, I studied Economics and what drove me into Operational Research was that interest in the modelling side of things. Not modelling generally but rather modelling practical problems and particularly decision-making problems. That’s where my interest arose in what Katana does.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The project itself started as an internal idea at ING. We had an initial project to help the traders in my team with their day-to-day decision making around liquidity provision, how to quote on electronic and manual RFQs, how to do this faster and more effectively. We developed a tool using Machine Learning to help with that task.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Then, out of that we had a spin-out project. We thought we can do this, we have developed a good approach to how to bring Machine Learning into an actual tool that you can use. We then decided to use this to help our clients. We started first with <a href="https://www.pggm.nl/en">PGGM</a> in the Netherlands to identify the problem that was their biggest pain point and where we can make the most impact. The intersection of what was relevant for <a href="https://www.pggm.nl/en">PGGM</a> and where our approach, expertise and knowledge could have the most impact.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The first prototype was very much a collaboration, we did all the work and they provided their feedback. So we iterated through several prototypes to a working product over about one year. Then we decided the product was mature enough to scale. We also decided that we would be better placed to scale the business outside rather than inside of the organisation [ING]. We decided to spin-out and Katana Labs was formed in November 2019, so we are just over one year old.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It has been interesting to launch a new company into this world, in this year that we have been having. But this is also affecting established players, the playbook for what you would do in a pre-Covid environment, you have to completely throw away. You have to think again from scratch. How did you get awareness in a pre-Covid environment? You had to go to the trade shows, in the big events, have your stands, give your presentations. You had face-to-face meetings, built connections and built relationships, that was very much how the sales process worked.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For us, we launched the product in January. For the first two and a half months we were working in the pre-Covid way. We were very successful, face-to-face meetings and getting to a point of sale on a clear path. The sales cycle was not very long since the product is very light in terms of adoption, there is no integration with systems or data, it’s web based so it’s very easy to start using it.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">One of the biggest issues we have found as a new company has been the change, from sales meaning flying around to meet people to more of a research project to find the right people with whom one must speak.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">With Covid everything changed. It may change the economics of the sales process in a positive way, but I think that has not happened yet. The first effect has been that the traditional sales channels are no longer there anymore. We have noticed that there has been a cycle, right at the beginning of the pandemic when people started working from home you had a sense of inertia, the conversations moved online, Zoom etc. Then people started to get busy with establishing a remote working pattern, spending a lot of time on Zoom calls but becoming fatigued with that. With regular calls with your boss, team, suppliers and so on people didn’t have so much time to start new relationships. I think we are coming out of this slump now as people are settled in a new way of working and are back to doing business in a normal way, albeit with constraints and restrictions. So we may end up seeing this as an advantage, as you will be able to do business without flying around.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The long-term impact remains to be seen. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Over the last couple of months people are getting on with things, especially with the end of year looming and planning for 2021 taking shape.</span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What does your firm do?</span></h3><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We do pre-trade analytics, we focus on relative value. We deliver relative value insights and analytics for bonds. What is new and distinct about our proposition is that we tackle this problem in a systematic way. We have built from the ground-up a system that is dedicated to solving the problem of monitoring and identifying relative value opportunities in the bond market. When I say we do that systematically we use machine learning to analyse the market. We look at every pair of bonds that can trade within a given universe. Analyse each pair with a machine learning algorithm and then identify where there is a relative value opportunity and changes in relative value that require attention.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The underlying thesis is that if you are involved in the bond market, whether as a portfolio manager, trader, analyst, salesperson or advisor you care about relative value, whether this is explicit or implicit. VA value is always relative, nothing is cheap or expensive on it’s own, it’s always with reference to something else.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As an example, for houses, you don’t make a judgement on whether a house is expensive or cheap without looking at the neighbourhood, square metres and other characteristics of the house, the price of the house in the past and the price of other houses in the area over time. You have a frame of reference to make a decision on what is fair value for a house. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the same way we do that for bonds, that’s one of the key things we believe, value is always relative. Another thing we believe is that opportunities are anchored in some change, when the world changes in some way and prices don’t or if prices change and that’s not justified by some change in the world. In other words, the relationship between prices and fundamentals changes. Given that it makes perfect sense that you want to observe and understand what has changed in the world, os if your world is investing in is US Credit you want to know what has changed in US Credit. But, you don’t just want to know what has changed. You want to know what has changed in relation to what. And effectively that’s what we mean when we say that relative value has changed. This is something everyone does, if you are an investment professional you are very, very likely to do this. I haven’t found anyone yet that does not have some way of making that judgement of relative value. Either a very simplistic way of looking at an index versus a particular bond, or you may look at a subset of bonds such as an industry. You may have one of more of these methods. In all cases there’s an assumption – some way of looking at a reference to a price. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We take a scientific approach, we make no assumptions about what is relevant to compare. We look at the whole universe, analyse each pair without any constraints of what should be looked at and what should not be looked at. And that’s where the Machine Learning piece comes in, as a machine is well suited to this heavyweight analytical processing, whereas a human will have a limited capacity to conduct this analysis. At the moment we cover 30,000 bonds throughout the bond universe, US IG Credit, EU IG Credit, Euro Govies, EM Global, SSAs. This means when we look at pairs we have hundreds of millions. With this amount of data we can train the algorithm to look at two things:</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">(1)<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We identify what are relevant factors that should be analysed – we look for bonds that have cointegration over time, but also are stationary. One problem with looking at large sets of time series data is that you will see spurious correlation, correlation will appear when there is no real link. One way to solve this is to impose more strict restrictions, you don’t just look at correlation but also look at stationarity. This reduces false positives significantly. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We started with a Bayesian perspective of complete rationality and then bring a judgement to that data. We found this was too scientific, that there is valuable insight in considering how people look at the market – in similarities in industry and country. So that when I see a dislocation in price of one bond versus another and it appears within the same industry category this makes sense to me as an opportunity.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Hence we added:</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">(2)<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The static characteristics of the bonds, industry, country, rating, maturity and so on. We then built a similarity score using machine learning on these static characteristics.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This means we have a system that can measure dynamic similarity and static similarity. This can then throw away say 99% of what we look at. Within the remaining 1% we want to identify where there are dislocations that are relevant.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We provide an application that gives those insights, from say 10 million pairs you look at, you may see a couple of hundred dislocations on a given day.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That’s where we are now on the product. What we are working on now is to make the workflow as natural and efficient as can be. We are working to find an interface that can leverage the power of machine learning that can be consumed and interpreted by a human brain. A lot of this has to do with the flexibility with how you interact with the data, how you visualise the data, how you bring in your own data and your own portfolio. We started with a very agnostic perspective, we learnt that people wanted to know what is happening with the portfolio I they already hold, what is happening with the watch list of bonds in which I they have an interest. They may even have preconceived ideas about pairs of bonds that they are interested in or bonds they want to compare. They want the tool to give them those insights also. So we need to merge all of these features into more of a hybrid – between a purely quantitative systematic trading strategy, where you write the code and just let it run, and a purely human based non-systematic strategy. We want to find the point where these things come together to give you the best result. It’s a really interesting challenge, not an easy thing to solve. But we are happy so far and so are our clients, so we are heading in the right direction.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There is so much more that we can do, at the moment we are really just scratching the surface of what we can do.</span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What made you pivot from a successful career as an Investment Banker and joined a newly incubated fintech start-up?</span></h3><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Three things. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This was an interest of mine for a very long time, so the idea of starting something of my own, of creating something from nothing was a long-term interest. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The second thing is that I found this is where I was most interested; an in the intellectual challenge but in a very applied way. The idea of creating the models, the frameworks that help you create better decisions, use using some clever maths and statistics and ultimately reduce the problem to something where you can make better decisions. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The third thing was seeing what seemed to be secular trends in the market – one is the continued growth of the bond market – increasing issuance of bonds and a market becoming more complex generally. On the other hand the incredible pace at which machine learning as a discipline has been evolving and the capabilities of machine intelligence generally. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It seems pretty clear to me that the future will have more and more machine intelligence in the fixed income world. So, in terms of career, the future lies more in what I am doing now rather than what I was doing just over a year ago.</span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As a Fixed-Income Fund Manager who is not tech-savvy, what can you do for me?</span></h3><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">If you have Katana you can upload your portfolio and watch-list. You can then see if any of those bonds are cheap or expensive against whatever else. You get a way of navigating the whole market space from the perspective of what you own or watch and can then see where you could extract value. It’s saving you time, you can go straight to the things that deserve attention. You will see where there are changes that you may have missed, things you may not be watching and you will see this when it happens.</span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Blockchain / Distributed ledger technology – in use with your firm? Hype or real?</span></h3><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We don’t use DLT. There is something very powerful at the core of this technology. The use cases are not yet string strong enough to be ‘game-changers’. Do we think there is a problem of trust within Fixed-Income? I don’t think so. Not trusting a central institution is not a real concern. There is a core proposition of a replacement of trust in a central institution with decentralisation. I think we will see a future iteration that will have a big impact, but not so far.</span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Cloud - in use with your firm? Hype or real?</span></h3><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We are cloud native. I mentioned two secular trends earlier, a third is the rise of cloud computing. That’s not only the ability to spin up machines and scale computing power quickly but the whole ecosystem of architecture, open source, development methodologies and the speed at which you can develop and deploy.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We built our first prototype in six weeks and it was being used by a client then. At the end of the development you have a cloud platform that is robust and well architected, you can do releases on a weekly basis. The ability to develop and deploy on a weekly basis is a true game-changer. The software we use at home works in this way, financial technology should be the same, frequent enhancements and releases. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The new generation of fintechs are all cloud native, adopt this or you will be left behind, on-premise is part of the past.</span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech – is that how you describe your firm?</span></h3><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Yes.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Where do you see technology impacting in the next five years on:<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">(a)<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>You<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">(b)<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Your firm<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">(c)<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Wider market</span></h3><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We have gone through an evolution in Fixed Income. An initial phase of information, go back to the 1980s where Bloomberg was the innovation. Over the last twenty years we have seen an evolution in connectivity, think of Tradeweb and MarketAxess. We are now entering a third wave of innovation around machine intelligence. The data is there, the connectivity is there. The amount of data and the velocity at which is moves s beyond what human brains can manage, so the obvious evolution is machine intelligence to create actionable insights. We mediate the data and connectivity with machine intelligence.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To look at this from the perspective of Katana, you should not be looking at screens and seeing numbers change, it makes no sense. You have four, six, eight screens full of numbers changing. The human brain is not evolved to do this. Let the machine do that work, they do that work really well. Then you bring your insights, expertise to this to make decisions. </span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To me, this is obvious. The only thing that is holding people back is that people are used to doing things in the way that they do.</span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" id="response_container_BBPPID" style="font-size: 16px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The core value we provide is that we can drive the attention of a portfolio manager to what needs attention. Otherwise you just spend your time being driven by external inputs that may not deserve attention.</span></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Important Notice: </b></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Copyright Alignment Systems 2020 </b></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">The second paragraph (biography) was supplied by Katana Labs as was the picture of Santiago Braje. This interview was conducted remotely over a Zoom call and transcribed by Alignment Systems. No payment was asked for or received either way.</span><span style="text-align: start;"> </span></p></div>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-18370044863869658222020-12-09T23:38:00.003+00:002020-12-11T15:44:15.476+00:00What does Alignment Systems do...<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Alignment Systems is a consulting business with a number of different work streams.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We focus on these business areas</span></h2><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span></span></span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Global, Multi-Asset Electronic Trading (95%)</span></h3><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Buy-Side</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Sell-Side</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Interdealer Broker</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Trading Venue</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Stock Exchange</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Digital Assets (tokenisation, custody, security)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Traditional Technology Vendors</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Data Vendors</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Fintech</span></li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Automotive (5%)</span></h3><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">MQTT</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Internet-of-things (IOT)</span></li></ul></div><div><h2><span style="font-family: arial;">We focus on these functional areas</span></h2><p></p></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Product Management and Product Marketing</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Assist vendors with product market fit analysis</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Design complex workflow models for technology</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Design marketing strategies for technology firms that need to augment in-house product marketing</span></div><div><br /></div><div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Connectivity</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="font-family: -webkit-standard;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Protocol creation - creation of parts of the FIX protocol</span></div><div style="font-family: -webkit-standard;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Creation of FIX Interactive Interface Definition Language (FIIDL) which became FIX Orchestra </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">First EMEA buy-side to trade Shanghai & Shenzhen using QFII and account ids using FIX.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Broker restrictions - enrich buy-side OMS to EMS flow with real-time broker restrictions (must use, must not use)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Systems integration - connect buy-side OMS to EMS in real-time using FIX</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Systems integration - connect </span>buy-side PMS to OMS in real-time using FIX</div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Systems integration - connect sell-side FIX engine to internal systems (data enrichment) in real-time</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Systems integration - enrich sell-side FIX engine received message to canonical representation (data normalisation & denormalisation) in real-time</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">QuickFIX/J - designed and built enhancements for missing functionality</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">QuickFIX/J </span>- designed and built message replay system for regression testing</div><div>FIXP-SBE-SOFH - designed and built (greenfield) complete FIXP-SBE-SOFH system</div><div>FIXP-SBE-SOFH - designed and built (greenfield) complete FIXP-SBE-SOFH testing system</div></span></div></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Business Analysis and Technology Deep-Dive Review</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Conduct arms-length, 'no-axe', deep-dive review of technology within an organisation</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Portfolio Management workflow analysis and enhancement</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Blotter review and clean-up</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Broker review and clean-up</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Workflow review and clean-up</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Compliance rules review and clean-up </span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Development Management, Development, Architecture, DevOps</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Interim development management</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Search and hiring development management</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Search and hire development personnel</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Design of testing models for Electronic Trading</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Integration of Electronic Trading systems into DevOps tooling</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Hands-on development in a variety of languages including</span></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Java</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">C#</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">JavaScript (client and server)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Visual Basic for Applications</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Python</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">SQL - several varieties</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">q</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">R</span></li></ul></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Advisory</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Collaborate to enhance capabilities in a hands-off role </span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Due Diligence</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Assist Private Equity and Venture Capital firms in functional and technical due diligence on investments.</span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Expert Witness</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Collaboration with litigation teams on fintech related law cases.</span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Data & Data Analytics</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Gather, clean, normalise, process heterogeneous data sets, perform analytics, calculate metrics, generate alerts, integrate with DevOps, visualise and display. All in real-time.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><h2><span style="font-family: arial;">We work with these asset classes and trading styles:</span></h2></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Asset Classes</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Equity</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Fixed Income Rates & Credit</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Futures</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Options</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Foreign Exchange</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">IRS</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">CDS</span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Trading Styles</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Care desk order flow</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Single item DMA</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Single item Algorithm</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Program trading</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Algorithmic program trading</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">RFQ</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">RFS</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Negotiation workflow</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Central limit order book</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Auctions</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><h2 style="font-family: -webkit-standard;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We work with people with these titles and their teams:</span></h2><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Head of Trading</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Head of Market Data</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Head of Quant Trading</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Head of Compliance</span></div><div>Chief Technology Officer</div><div>Lead Quantitative Analyst</div><div>Chief Information Officer</div><div>Chief Data Officer</div><div>Head of Development</div><div>Head of Quantitative Development</div><div>Head of Delta One Desk</div><div>Head of ETF Trading Desk</div><div>Chief Executive Officer</div><div>Global Head of Connectivity</div><div>Head of Fixed Income Trading</div><div>Head of Rates Trading</div><div>Global Head of Trading</div><div>Head of Pre-Sales Engineering</div><div>DevOps Lead</div><div>Head of Connectivity Services</div></span></div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We work with a wide range of technologies:</span></h2><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Protocols</span></h3><div><ul><li><span style="font-family: arial;">FIX</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">FIX Orchestra</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">FIXP-SBE-SOFH</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">MQTT</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">RESTful/WS/JSON</span></li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Middleware</span></h3><ul><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Solace</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">AMQP RabbitMQ</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">JMS</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">WebSockets</span></li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Data Platforms</span></h3><ul><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Bloomberg b-Pipe</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Activ Financial</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Bloomberg Professional</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">RMDS</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Factset</span></li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Server & Desktop Applications</span></h3><ul><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Excel, Excel RTD, VBA</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Node.js/JavaScript/HTML5/CSS</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">OpenFin</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Adaptable Tools</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Charles River Development (CRD) Investment Management System</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">thinkfolio</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Fidessa</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">ION Marketview</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">ITG Triton</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Portware</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Tradeweb</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">MarketAxess</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Bloomberg</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">MTS Bondvision</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Liquidnet</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">FXAll</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">FXConnect</span></li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Operating Systems</span></h3><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Windows</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">MacOS</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">CentOS</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">RHEL</span></li></ul></div><div><i><span style="font-family: arial;">And others that are older such as VMS, AIX...</span></i></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">FIX engines </span></h3></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">QuickFIX/J</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Cameron</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">FIX Flyer</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">TransactTools</span></li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Development Tools & Languages</span></h3></div><div><ul><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Microsoft Visual Studio</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Microsoft Visual Studio Code</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">intelliJ</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Eclipse</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Gradle</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Python</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Java</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">R</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">SQL</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">C#</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">JavaScript (client and server)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">Visual Basic for Applications</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">q</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">R</span></li></ul></div><div><i><span style="font-family: arial;">And others that are older such as Visual Basic 6, TCL/TK, JCL...</span></i></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><p></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com10 Downing St, Westminster, London SW1A 2AB, UK51.5033635 -0.127624829.390066709347632 -35.283874799999985 73.616660290652362 35.028625199999986tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-50247469753370639552020-12-06T11:01:00.039+00:002020-12-07T00:56:24.593+00:00Fintech Explainer: Anti-Patterns and Job Titles<p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); font-family: arial;">This article is about the anti-pattern** that is the corporate fintech job title mess...</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"><a name='more'></a></span></span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Let's start with a lightly anonymised example. A fintech startup of 2019 vintage, a sample of the job titles:</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); font-family: arial;">CEO</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Executive Chairman</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Managing Director</span><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">CFO</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Global Head of Customer Experience</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">CTO</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Lead Developer, CX</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Senior Director</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">VP of Product</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Product Manager</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Managing Director Principal</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Director</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Global Head, Network Engineering</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=" font-family: arial;"><span>The company has around 30 staff on LinkedIn, the 13 shown above are representative of the 27. The remaining three are clearly junior staff members - associate, junior </span>developer and an intern. Sure there cannot be 90% management and 10% doers? This must indicate a firm with a severe case of job title inflation...</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style=" caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">Yet - how can a start-up work if everyone is already using big company job titles and job title inflation? This is an anti-pattern. Start-ups with big company corporate structures - how many of them lead to a success story?</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #202122; font-family: arial;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUAEBj-3Rx3QCl_eDzJ993TgtXYcJLrVS0QAr4S4CmDk5PY4nBDRNQv_PbBWqsx2nGkInkI0V7Ce_FtDPyfLzzoTfJDHsDaTzniMi_wvohyfaFDBUKIAkNelTHGxb9DTOq3RdWicuP5AA/s1200/origin.jpg.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUAEBj-3Rx3QCl_eDzJ993TgtXYcJLrVS0QAr4S4CmDk5PY4nBDRNQv_PbBWqsx2nGkInkI0V7Ce_FtDPyfLzzoTfJDHsDaTzniMi_wvohyfaFDBUKIAkNelTHGxb9DTOq3RdWicuP5AA/s16000/origin.jpg.webp" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Another organisation with a defective job title system...</i></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><span style=" font-family: arial;">** Software developers have a term in common usage - a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_pattern">pattern</a><span>. This is described by wikipedia thus:</span></span><p></p><p><span style=" font-family: arial;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">In </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" title="Software engineering">software engineering</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">, a </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">software design pattern</b><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> is a general, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reusability" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" title="Reusability">reusable</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> solution to a commonly occurring problem within a given context in </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" title="Software design">software design</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">. It is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" title="Source code">source</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> or </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_code" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" title="Machine code">machine code</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">. Rather, it is a description or template for how to solve a problem that can be used in many different situations. Design patterns are formalized </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_practice" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none;" title="Best practice">best practices</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);"> that the programmer can use to solve common problems when designing an application or system.</span></span></p><p><span style=" font-family: arial;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">The opposite is the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern" style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">anti-pattern</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">, wikipedia states this as being:</span></span></p><p><span style=" font-family: arial;"><span><span>...</span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34);">a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive.</span></span></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Aldermaston, Reading RG7, UK51.3838496 -1.153293923.073615763821152 -36.3095439 79.694083436178843 34.0029561tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-34328043581230729012020-11-27T11:10:00.001+00:002020-11-27T11:10:01.060+00:00Fintech Interview: Matthew Reid, Product Manager, SimCorp<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Third interview with people within Fintech, this one with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-reid-67a194142/">Matthew Reid</a> of <a href="https://www.simcorp.com">SimCorp</a> </span></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Matthew Reid, Product Manager, Director, SimCorp</span></b></h3><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Matthew is Product Manager for the Order Manager module of SimCorp Dimension. Matthew has over 15 years’ experience in the financial software industry and has played a key role in the ongoing development of trading solutions and the Order Manager module in line with both industry and client expectations.</span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjainsksQhftcKZ8GEmTKNQ0y4kBWXGHoTcHcop5kYLnTxpGEkfbWxYdHS1MOr66aBzDFAmzU6V8pk-Jc8Vaso234TrHk6GjDHqm8x0zpYc06wfe9RieKddfs4Kp-dsQmfQEk7TYtjGguE/s300/image001.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjainsksQhftcKZ8GEmTKNQ0y4kBWXGHoTcHcop5kYLnTxpGEkfbWxYdHS1MOr66aBzDFAmzU6V8pk-Jc8Vaso234TrHk6GjDHqm8x0zpYc06wfe9RieKddfs4Kp-dsQmfQEk7TYtjGguE/s0/image001.png" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><b><i>Who are you?</i><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">Matthew Reid, Product Manager at SimCorp<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><b><i>What firm do you work for? [How long have you been there? What other roles have you done before in that firm?]</i><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">SimCorp<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><b><i>What does your firm do?</i><o:p></o:p></b></p><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">SimCorp is a leading provider of Investment Management Solutions. The background is that the company was founded as a back-office provider in 1971. SimCorp moved into the product market in the late 1970s and was originally best known in the Scandinavian region. Since then the firm has grown to be a complete front-to-back provider, arguably the first true front-to-back provider in the Investment Management space, all the way from accounting to the front office.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">In the past the market had many more ‘best-of-breed’ solutions. The market though has moved in the direction of SimCorp in that over recent years more firm such as <a href="https://www.crd.com">CRD</a> and <a href="https://www.blackrock.com/institutions/en-gb/solutions/aladdin">Blackrock</a> are moving into the SimCorp front-to-back space although they don’t have the full depth of back-to-front capability.</div></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Now SimCorp is a business with 20 plus offices and more than 1800 employees globally. <o:p></o:p></span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">SimCorp have 52% of the top 50 asset managers (by AUM) as clients, 42% of the top 100 and 46% of the top 200</span></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;">SimCorp Dimension has over 16,000 users worldwide and SimCorp retains 300 clients globally. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>What do you do for that firm?</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Product Manager, based in London, on the Order and Execution part of the front office product. One of a team of Product Managers on Front office that cover four products:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Order Manager - classic Order Management System functionality aimed at the centralised dealing desk<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Asset Manager – ‘what-if’ scenario and portfolio modelling for Portfolio Managers<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Compliance Manager – aimed at the Compliance Manager and the backbone of all of the compliance that is executed in the system<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Alternative Investments Manager – Front Office system for illiquid assets and private markets but tends to be used by different teams, as this offers different functionality<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>What made you join your current firm?</i></span></b></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I was the Managing Director of SolutionForge. SolutionForge had built the first commercial FIX engine running within the Microsoft .NET platform and was pushing into the buy-side front office OMS trading space.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">SolutionForge was a technology supplier to SimCorp. <a href="https://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2005/Sep/20/simcorp-acquires-fix-specialist-solutionforge/">And eventually SimCorp liked the product so much they bought the company</a>. That was 15 years ago. </span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I thought I would be at SimCorp for a year, and I’ve stayed for 15.</span></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>What do you see going on in the world right now where people are gaining real commercial advantage from the product/services of your firm?</i></span></b></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This has changed significantly over the last few years. We are moving from being a software vendor to being a service provider. In the past we’ve been “all things to all people” and now we are moving to being a backbone of an ecosystem for investment processing. We’re not going to build everything that our clients want. Client want to have their “secret sauce” that adds alpha and use SimCorp to handle the heavy lifting. </span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We are being pushed to deliver increased levels of automation for processing and we are doing a lot of development in trading automation. A client can get data from SimCorp, extract that data, run their own models – which counterparties to use for an order, how to trade an order and so on. The client is using Dimension as the backbone and then they integrate with their own proprietary technology. An example is a firm that has proprietary intellectual property such as a trade optimisation module that they use with data sourced from Dimension and the results feed back into Dimension.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We are incredibly willing to work with other parties to get optimal outcomes for clients. Other vendors may not offer the openness that is intrinsic to the SimCorp model. This has been received well by clients and prospects and is an ongoing model of cooperation with clients.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Clients also want to see SimCorp partner up with other vendors. A good example of this is the TradingScreen alliance, where we have linked with TS to deliver value from an execution perspective but also a much closer integration. We are also looking to other partners in this space and that’s something we are very open about. Much smaller firms will be able to join with SimCorp, not quite an AppStore model, but something where they can access the SimCorp backbone.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Blockchain / Distributed ledger technology – in use with your firm? Hype or real?</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Not seen a big push from current client base. The bigger push we are seeing from our clients in the emerging technology field is machine learning. We are incubating some projects in this space at the moment in response to client requests. We are experimenting at the moment, nothing is ready to go live yet. We have dipped a toe into the blockchain/DLT world but it’s not a core focus of our concern at the moment.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Cloud - in use with your firm? Hype or real?</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Until 5 or 6 six years ago SimCorp was software on premise. Since then it has mainly moved to new clients taking a hosted solution. That’s not a “pure cloud” solution, and we are moving forward in collaboration with Microsoft to use Azure for a true cloud-native solution. This will radically enhance our ability to collaborate and work with partners. We will be able to interact with other vendors more easily and with a faster time-to-market for our clients.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Current on-premise implementations are able to take advantage of this as well, as we are able to offload certain data and compute intensive processes to the cloud. So on-premise solutions will be able take advantage of a glide-path to incrementally move to cloud.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Many of our clients are large asset managers who will want to differentiate themselves with their own systems running on the SimCorp core. They will not want to build this into the Dimension product, since that will be available to all SimCorp clients. Instead clients want to be able to interface with SimCorp while retaining their private intellectual property within their own hands.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Where do you see technology impacting in the next five years on:<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></p><ol start="1" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;" type="a"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>You<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Your firm<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Wider market</i></span></b></li></ol><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I would be surprised if firms are willing to take all their technology from one provider. We see some firms in this space who want to offer a “black-box” and deliver everything for the client, typically they are not so keen on integration and interoperability with other technology vendors. As SimCorp we will provide a core platform but not everything that happens within a client firm will happen with the SimCorp core, so we are making our platform easy to interact with others, so if a client has a specific piece of optimisation software</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">SimCorp will be provided as a set of services, rather than a monolithic application. SimCorp will have to deliver much more than just technology, the corporate ethos is shifting to a deliverer of services. The level of expectations is increasing all the time, clients consider “what are you doing for me?”. Clients expect a lot more, they don’t just want you to deliver software and then say “you solve all your problems with what we have built for you”. They want see what problems you can solve for them and that requires hosting and a spirit of collaboration. Rather than offering a series of integrations for, for example, static data, they want to switch on Dimension and static data is all there and ready to go. Clients want us to take away these problems for them. </div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At some point there will have to be a reckoning around the charging models as brokers are more squeezed – for trading venue platforms and EMS platforms. Specifically, from a regulatory perspective – a long term consideration has been “can these pricing models survive MiFID? Can these pricing models survive MiFID2?”</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-align: left;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Fintech – is that how you describe your firm?</i></span></b></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">SimCorp regards itself as the leading provider of software solutions and Services to the world’s largest buy-side institutions. </span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 15.546667098999023px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Go crazy – make some wild predictions about machine learning, AI, DLT, cloud, whatever</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Machine learning has been of more interest and this is something where we have active projects at the moment in proof-of-concept stage. More experiments than ready for prime-time production.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Important Notice: </b></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Copyright Alignment Systems 2020 </b></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">The second paragraph (biography) was supplied by SimCorp as was the picture of Matthew Reid. This interview was conducted remotely over a Zoom call and transcribed by Alignment Systems. No payment was asked for or received either way.</span><span style="text-align: start;"> </span></p></span></div>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Easter Island, Valparaíso, Chile-27.112723 -109.3496865-55.422956836178841 -144.50593650000002 1.1975108361788465 -74.1934365tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-56712696228404438072020-11-20T01:24:00.000+00:002020-11-20T01:24:09.829+00:00Fintech Interview: Andy Mahoney, Managing Director UK, FlexTrade<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Second interview of people within Fintech, this one with </span><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-mahoney-064b00/" style="font-family: arial;" target="_blank">Andy Mahoney</a><span style="font-family: arial;"> of </span><a href="https://flextrade.com" style="font-family: arial;" target="_blank">Flextrade</a><span style="font-family: arial;">...</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Andy Mahoney has been working in the financial services industry for more than 15 years, with time spent at Goldman Sachs and trading systems provider, FlexTrade Systems. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Initially a strategy specialist, Andy helped grow the FlexTrade business in the EMEA region from a four-person outpost to a major enterprise with a team of more than 100, leading to his appointment as Head of Implementation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 2010 he joined Goldman Sachs, where he led the REDIPlus product in Europe, and managed liquidity strategy and smart order routing across Goldman's wider electronic business. Mahoney's enthusiasm for trading technology saw him return to FlexTrade in 2012 and is now Managing Director and Head of Sales, driving the company's business strategy to regulation, cross asset trading and providing a fully open architecture, creating a new trading ecosystem that allows third-party technology to be seamlessly integrated.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_sqJ3FtNrHRFL52gYFdlzs848vIegiUv0j19794JIGoMhH55jsjUMqu_IB8-tJr5WbhMLDA0YxixWht-WAq2iFY1Y4AOQ6OVlpYvzGg45yeiwtMAzOdjoXkRwy-JFgTWtDAB5VLwMdP0/s1805/image001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1805" data-original-width="1203" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_sqJ3FtNrHRFL52gYFdlzs848vIegiUv0j19794JIGoMhH55jsjUMqu_IB8-tJr5WbhMLDA0YxixWht-WAq2iFY1Y4AOQ6OVlpYvzGg45yeiwtMAzOdjoXkRwy-JFgTWtDAB5VLwMdP0/w426-h640/image001.jpg" width="426" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><i>Who are you?</i> <i>What firm do you work for? [How long have you been there? What other roles have you done before in that firm?]</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">This time round 8 years, previously, starting in 2004 for five years. I started as an implementation engineer, moved to Head of Support, and then I left for two years and went to Goldman Sachs. I ran the REDIPlus product and then came back as a Product Manager for FlexTrade EMS.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The first role back was as Product Manager and my experience at Goldman Sachs was that one needed sales to help with product management because product management is such a varied function, sales input was just as crucial as input from development and other stakeholders. When I began product management, I annoyed the sales people so much; asking so many questions about what our clients wanted, how they wanted it and how they wanted it implemented well, in the end Vikas [<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikas-kedia-5b3408/">Kedia</a>], who was the Managing Director at the time, said ‘why don’t you go into sales as you are annoying everyone so much with your constant questions?’<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">As a technologist at heart, I never had any ambitions to go into sales. I was quite reluctant at the start, however, I thought that if I can build the product I wanted - then I will go into sales. It turned out I really enjoyed sales; it’s all the best bits of product management I enjoy and I was the one talking to the clients so I was the one who knew what they wanted. I spent two years in Sales, made head of Sales, and, as of three months ago, was promoted to Managing Director; definitely not a predetermined course.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><i>What does your firm do?</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><b> </b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">FlexTrade is a multi-asset execution and order management system with clients across the world. The way I see it is that it’s an order state manager with a bunch of FIX engines and market data normalisation that is completely programmable.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">So that core of order state management, FIX engines, and market data is all taken care of and you just have an event-based system where you can build whatever you want based on the events that are coming in. You click a button, you get an event, when you send an order you get an event, when you receive an order acknowledgement you get an event: it’s an event driven system and you can programme anything on top of that.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">This has applications across much of the financial services landcape where one uses FIX messaging or any kind of order state management. We have ended up building out a product for buy-side OMS, buy-side EMS, sell-side OMS, sell-side EMS, algo server – all these different products but it’s a common core of FIX engines, market data normalisation, and order state management presented into one place.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><i>What made you go back?</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">I am not particularly career driven, when I was looking to leave Goldman Sachs, well, I am an amateur Cheese maker <a href="https://handyface.wordpress.com/">https://handyface.wordpress.com</a>, and my plan was to leave and run a dairy. I had a job lined up as a dairy manager to bring together two production process, once making blue rind cheese, one making white rind cheese. The problem with blue and white rind cheeses is that white always takes over blue, so the logistics of this manufacturing process was going to be my job and I was really excited about it. A complete diversion from what I had always done. The slight problem was that it was going to require a huge lifestyle change, a huge salary change, and upping my entire life.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The day I was about to resign from Goldman Sachs, Vikas contacted me to ask me to rejoin FlexTrade. I thought “I know that if I go and talk to him, I will take it”. There was so much going on at FlexTrade it really relighted my passion, I really like working with technology, it’s a very flexible, entrepreneurial firm. If you have a good idea you can get it done. I just thought I will give it a couple of years, at worst case I build up some savings for a future cheese making career. And here I am eight years later talking to you…<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><b> </b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><i>What has your journey looked like from starting your career to here?</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">It wasn’t designed to happen like this at all!<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Every week when I was at Goldman Sachs I would send out a REDIPlus update to the desk, what was happening with the product, how many users had logged-in, what initiatives were happening, etc. At the end of the email I would put a “<a href="https://handyface.wordpress.com" target="_blank">Cheese of the week</a>”, talking about a Cheese that I was quite interested in, had been making or had been thinking about. I realised I had done too much on the Cheese and not enough on the REDI stuff when I noticed that as I sent the email out, everyone scrolled down to the Cheese and no one read the REDI update… I thought maybe I had overplayed the Cheese bit.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><i>Cloud - in use with your firm? Hype or real?</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">What we have done with FlexTrade is we started distributing the software via AWS, the back-end runs in AWS and the front-end is delivered by <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/appstream2/">AppStream</a>. My experience with AWS AppStream is that it’s vastly better than something like <a href="https://www.citrix.com/products/receiver.html">Citrix Receiver</a>. Being able to embed an application that is not web-native into a browser is amazing. The technology that Amazon, Azure, and others have is just mind-blowing. It is amazing how easy this stuff is these days. I look back ten years ago when I was in a more technical role and I compare to now, when I talk to my guys I find myself saying I didn’t even know these things existed, they are just incredible.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We also have a true cloud native EMS called FlexNOW, that is built in the cloud, not an on-premise system that has been shifted to a cloud. It’s massively distributed and scalable.<span style="text-align: start;"> </span></p><h3><b>Cloud is definitely here to stay and we definitely buy into it.</b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;">There is still some resistance from certain clients to move entirely to the cloud, this might be for regulatory reasons. Some clients just want on-premise solutions. But the cost savings are compelling if you look at clous versus on-premise. When a client asks “can we host it ourselves?” I respond with “are you an infrastructure provider? Or are you a trading shop?”. The answer is of course trading shop so I ask why are you trying to build an infrastructure to rival Amazon, Azure, GCP etc. when these are some of the biggest companies in the world and this is what they do for a living.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><i>Where do you see technology impacting in the next five years on:<o:p></o:p></i></p><ol start="1" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: start;" type="a"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>You<o:p></o:p></i></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Your firm<o:p></o:p></i></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><i>Wider market</i><o:p></o:p></li></ol><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">As a salesperson selling technology, the fact that I can code is of massive benefit. I saw the other day an advert for “that rare breed of salesperson that can code”. But I don’t think that should be rare at all, it’s a good skill to have for a salesperson to be able to understand software and what software can and cannot do. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Having a computer science background will stand you in good stead whatever you decide to do, whether it’s sales, product, marketing or development.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">For FlexTrade, we have always been API driven, it was something that we did not use to make enough noise about. Now, it’s a key part of what we say and how we operate. My view is that the GUI will be largely irrelevant in five years, everything will be API driven. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><h3>Everything will be built using <a href="https://openfin.co" target="_blank">OpenFin</a> or <a href="https://adaptabletools.com" target="_blank">AdaptableBlotter</a></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">A firm will do this themselves or get a third party consultancy, a UX consultancy, to get the data in the right place and the API layer will handle the rest. Open-source initiatives will allow users to see the data they want in the way they want, rather than applications “designed” through years of random client feedback. This already exists in consumer technology and vendors will end up being the API layer. We are really well positioned for this:</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><h3>We are a bunch of geeks and we always use our own APIs</h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We’ve built the system that way, everything has APIs and that’s the way it’s built. Most clients we speak to these days want an API session to pull data out or push data in or do some analysis and push data around. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><h3><b>I feel that even using the term GUI is a legacy term. It’s an archaic 80s concept.</b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The user experience is what matters, whether that’s in a web form or a dot net form or whatever that does not matter, it’s the experience that counts.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">In the wider market, the API focus extends across everything. <a href="https://symphony.com" target="_blank">Symphony</a> is interesting. How can a broker push out data to a buy-side form most efficiently? I view Symphony essentially as a transport layer, to open a channel that is encrypted and secure. And with that channel I can drop FIX messages or REST content or a structured object. As opposed to having to establish a VPN and a FIX session. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.fixtrading.org/fix-orchestra/" target="_blank">FIX Orchestra</a> is really interesting for simplifying the communication between two counterparties, it’ll mean that more and more stuff is driven by APIs. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">There are going to be more and more fintech disruptors that come in [to the market] and do one thing really well. Just solve one thing with open APIs such that clients can pick up value from multiple vendors. Essentially it’s the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy">UNIX philosophy</a> for the fintech age.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">The disruption of billing models is a topic I want to address. As with advertising, in consumer technology, if you are not paying for the product then you are the product. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">This is a topic that needs to be discussed more, not just in trading systems but generally, the whole concept of how people pay for technology and what value they get from the technology. And any kind of subsidisation or cross-pollination of revenues. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We just want to deliver technology to buy-sides and sell-side, that’s all. It will be interesting to see how billing models evolve over the next five years. Where that transparency happens, where is the mark-up, where are things actually getting paid for? If you don’t know who is paying the bill would you want to trust your most precious assets to that system?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><i>Fintech – is that how you describe your firm?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">We were initially quite reluctant to jump on the fintech bandwagon, I am not even sure when the phrase first came out. We have been going since 1996 and yes, we are a financial technology firm, there’s no doubt about it. Now we are happy to be described in that way, we are a financial technology company. For me, the real question is where on the spectrum of fintech do you fit? Are you more aligned to finance or are you more aligned to technology and I personally feel we very technology focussed. We are technologists providing a solution to finance at its very heart.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><i>Go crazy – make some wild predictions about machine learning, AI, DLT, cloud, whatever</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: start;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_process_automation">Robotic Process Automation</a> is a really interesting one that is not talked about much in finance. Basically, it’s any deterministic action that is being undertaken by a human, then making sure that is automated. Essentially you are distilling down the human trader to making judgement calls between one decision which needs a human input and another. I think this is naturally happening but it’s about embracing that and making it unique for a client, one trader’s workflow may look radically different to another’s. Metrics such as optimisation of mouse clicks, making sure you only interact with data when you only need to.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">New blotter. I follow <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/butlerjon72/">Jon Butler on LinkedIn</a>, he’s an ex-Goldman Sachs MD. In one of his blog posts he said the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-front-office-technology-might-look-10-years-time-jon-butler">Excel-like Blotter is dead</a>. I have been agonising for years about the best way to present trading data. It seems that the Excel-like format is convenient since people are used to that, but there must be a better way? We have tried to use graphical elements to present data such as charts, bubbles, we even tried augmented reality (AR) back in <a href="https://tradetecheu2017.wbresearch.com/agenda/preparing-your-desk-for-unprecedented-regulatory-change">2017 at TradeTech</a>. Internally we referred to Flex Augmented Reality as a moonshot (in the <a href="https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/1/233518-hey-google-whats-a-moonshot/fulltext">Google sense of ‘moonshot’</a>) – you could interact with the system using gestures and it used our standard APIs but we did not expect that anyone would use it. The reason I mention his (Butler’s) post is that I though yes, here’s a different way of presenting – rather than symbol, side, size in a row and some analysis. It’s a challenging problem as it requires you to really get into depth of what the user is thinking and what they want, breaking them out of the mindset of “you’ve just got a grid”. You have to get them to explain what they are thinking when they see this data, what’s the natural next step? What’s the next thing to do? What’s the next trade I need to look at, what’s the next judgement call I need to make?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Years ago, the salespeople at FlexTrade used to describe the product as “Excel on steroids”. I used to hate that phrase. While it’s weirdly apt, we can do a lot better than that. There’s a lot more in terms of user experience that we can focus on, we can do more than simply presenting data on a grid and saying here you go. It’s about being in tune with the user in the way that consumer technology is focussing on UX all the time. The big internet firms conduct extensive research on how people use their products and how they interact with them to optimise revenue for themselves. There is so much technology out there that can improve the user experience and I really hope that in the next few years, as with API logic and API-first systems, someone really disrupts the UX space and comes up with a better way to interact with users rather than a blotter. We are hard at it, working on this for our clients. We are always looking for better ways to present the data and workflow. One example, of all the orders on the blotter, can we identify which one is the most urgent and needs your immediate attention? What metrics can you use to determine that and how can we make this easy for the user to configure? So the user can look at these trades within a certain tolerance of x and building a framework not just for alerting but for determining what it is to look at next, deciding your journey through your day on the path of best execution. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">Information Security and Privacy. My University final year project was based around certain aspects of information security. The number of RFPs we receive nowadays where Information security is absolutely paramount to the requirements is very high. A big information breach [within financial services] could be transformative to the entire industry. We are all working to adhere to standards but in some respects this is a missing feature in financial services and there has, so far, not been a big event to shake this up.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><h3>A prediction for the next five years is that Information Security will become even more important. </h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;">This will not only be proactive but reactive too. As there will be events that happen and the reaction is critical.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Important Notice: </b></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Copyright Alignment Systems 2020 </b></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">The second paragraph (biography) was supplied by FlexTrade as was the picture of Andy Mahoney. This interview was conducted remotely over a Zoom call and transcribed by Alignment Systems. No payment was asked for or received either way.</span><span style="text-align: start;"> </span></p></div></span>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Galápagos Islands, Ecuador-0.383106 -90.4233344-28.693339836178847 -125.5795844 27.927127836178844 -55.2670844tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-81105287262551690282020-11-17T15:00:00.001+00:002020-11-18T04:55:58.467+00:00Fintech Interview: Thomas Kim - CEO, Enfusion<p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A slight change of pace, a series of interviews with interesting people within the Fintech space. First up, Thomas Kim of Enfusion...</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-kim-969960/" target="_blank">Thomas Kim</a> was named CEO in early 2020 to build upon<a href="https://www.enfusionsystems.com" target="_blank"> Enfusion’s</a> success as an industry-leading technology and managed services provider to global hedge funds and investment managers. With more than 25 years’ experience in the capital markets, Thomas recently served at Bridgewater Associates for more than seven years, most notably as COO of the investment engineering group. Prior to joining Bridgewater, Thomas held executive roles at various global sell side institutions and fintechs, including managing director at Lehman Brothers, COO at Trading Screen, and CEO at UNX, a digital broker dealer. He also served as CEO at Tassat and held multiple roles at Macgregor and Merrin Financial/ADP. Thomas holds a degree from the American University.</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: white; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"> </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxTr33Sr8EbO2zVH6FGXj3kzMooIeV7E8YkW-gpv9eHnm3avIpDx1-3PIuNKWGHZsdLBbahEDVP0dHiLNesKUNP9TWWB_m_-5m-R5ySnfqrljWVqqwp9_jX9yAqXE0FXm5Cv_AiAD22nY/s756/Thomas+Kim+%25281%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="756" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxTr33Sr8EbO2zVH6FGXj3kzMooIeV7E8YkW-gpv9eHnm3avIpDx1-3PIuNKWGHZsdLBbahEDVP0dHiLNesKUNP9TWWB_m_-5m-R5ySnfqrljWVqqwp9_jX9yAqXE0FXm5Cv_AiAD22nY/w400-h299/Thomas+Kim+%25281%2529.png" width="400" /></span></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Who are you?</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So, I’m nobody. When it comes down to it, I am just a guy that has fortunately been in the capital markets and lucky enough to come across the people who were the firsts. When I was at ADP I acquired Seth Merrin’s Merrin Financial that was the first order management system for the institutional side. When you look ahead, I was the Chief Operations Officer over at TradingScreen before things went awry. They were one of the first execution management systems and I was the guy who raised $100million and just as that was finalising I left to join Lehman Brothers to build out their Electronic Trading franchise. There I acquired</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><a href="https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/lehman-expands-electronic-trading-20051221" style="font-family: arial;">Townsend Analytics</a><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">to help grow their franchise with this interesting technology that was relatively relevant for the buy-side community for multi-asset EMS. I stayed with Lehman Brothers all the way through to the demise and at that point I got into conversations with some folks over at Goldman Sachs who had an investment in</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><a href="https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/31090/trading-technology-firm-unx-names-ex-lehman-md-thomas-kim-ceo-gets-funding" style="font-family: arial;">UNX</a><span style="font-family: arial;">. This was at a time when there was no room for small agency brokers as there was not enough flow to go around so I stepped in to figure out how to reconstitute the firm into something relevant that was eventually sold to Deutsche Bank. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I then found myself at Bridgewater as the Chief Operating Officer for the Investment Engine. I found myself in perhaps one of the most interesting places I have worked at with perhaps the smartest set of people located in one place doing really cool stuff. I spent a good seven years there and eventually found myself coming onboard at Enfusion to do more great stuff for the Investment Management community. When you add it up it’s a guy who has been in the capital markets space for a while, the most important thing I have learned is basically perseverance and a lot of what technology can do for an industry that is looking for evolution. Not as a disruptor, but as an instrument that can really help inform and help have impact in their ability to perform their goals.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div><o:p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">I hate this, “let’s take the shiny object in the room and try and find a problem that is solves”, versus there are an overabundance of problems and can we look at those problems and figure out how technology can overcome those challenges for the better instead of the other way around. </div></span><o:p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">That’s the perspective I like to bring to the table. I have been a part of the things that we call fintech today that was financial services widgets way back when, to the perspective of the sell-side and the perspective of the buy-side and how there is commonality in terms of how they are all trying to solve similar things. Every once in a while, you come across an organisation with the right kind of vision and the right kind of thinking that is focussed on solving those big deal problems versus trying to sell a widget. Or trying to spin up the next shiny object in the room called technology that everyone gravitates towards and never really quite solves the bigger problems.</div></span><o:p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">So hopefully, based upon a little bit of that perseverance and a lot of that perspective I can bring to the table a perspective to solve those big problems. That’s ultimately what I like to think of myself in terms of what we are trying to do. Or else I just would have stayed at Bridgewater for a very long time and done great things over there on the trajectory of the great things they do.</div></span><o:p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Hopefully that amounts to something that has been impactful.</div></span><o:p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Philippe [Buhannic] is one of them, quite frankly a man I adored. </div></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>It comes down to the folks to whom I have been introduced, be that a Seth [Merrin] or Philippe or </b><b>Tarek [Hammoud]. These are folks that have created and done great things. <o:p></o:p></b></span></h3><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It has been wonderful to be surrounded by, influenced by these wonderful folks who have made such amazing contributions.</span></div><o:p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Philippe was a man with an incredible vision, you had to really know him to know he was really onto something. When I left TradingScreen it was a really difficult decision to make. Though he [Philippe] didn’t speak to me for perhaps ten years, we reconnected and it was like we picked up where we left off. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Why am I the CEO of Enfusion now? The reason I took the seat wasn’t to re-create another EMS, or another Order Management System or PMS. That’s not the centrepiece of what it is that we are trying to achieve with Enfusion. The interesting thing that we are trying to do with Enfusion is to solve a bigger problem that goes well beyond just a competitor to TradingScreen or Refinitiv, it’s more than that. And this is the exciting part. </div></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">We want to solve the problems that are central to the investment management community. </span></b></h3><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And some of these problems they [incumbents] have not even got their arms around. So we want to be on the forefront of these things. And what is it? Well, what it’s not, I don’t want to compete with Eze Castle on just an EMS or an OMS, that’s not what we are doing. What I want to do to do is solve based on the inflows of money coming into traditional asset managers and hedge funds. There is this natural disconnect from one side of the organisation and the other. Take for example a traditional asset manager that has institutional money on one side of the spectrum and wealth management on the other. In the past the flow of wealth management money was not particularly compelling, it was bastard child of the traditional asset manager that had all of this institutional money and all of the innovation was within the institutional money side. Now it’s different, you have growing flows of wealth management money and it’s no longer so tilted one way. They are both trying to achieve the same goals yet they are plagued with disparate core infrastructure, technologies and workflows and they don’t have the ability to interconnect and take advantage of scale to achieve their goals. And the same for hedge funds and traditional asset managers. What we want to do through time, is to help alleviate these problems based on one fact: </span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">We have built a front to back, end-to-end, tightly woven ecosystem that goes from portfolio management, accounting all the way down to order management and execution management and trading. </span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></b></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And then wrapped up in a middle and back-office outsourced services. We can solve for this across the organisation and at the same time resolve this crazy Frankenstein model of workflows and the correlating data that traverses from system to system that was created by a best of breed approach that, at that time, was quite frankly the right thing to do. You fast forward to today and that has created a mess, and that around the data. The data is so critical today to drive insights, to drive a better understanding of what to do, to drive a better understanding of the world and trying to apply that understanding to your investment decisions. You need a better way to do this through a single source of the truth data.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Every Asset Manager or Hedge Fund today is ever so tightly aware of what data can do for them. Simplifying their ability to navigate through the data has never been more important than it is today. </span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We have resolved this, for an organisation that wants to solve this at the root, we can offer an ecosystem that has solved it. We didn’t acquire pieces of the solution, we have the whole solution, we have done elegantly, through the cloud. That’s not a server-side application that evolved through decades, that made it’s way to Azure or AWS and which, all of a sudden, they are now calling a cloud solution. It’s not. We have done it properly from the beginning, whereas these folks coming from a server-side implementation have a single tenant solution that has no ability to do multi-tenant. We are multi-tenant by design and can also do single tenancy, since you can do that when you are a cloud native solution.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">The devil is in the details in terms of how these things actually work and we have solved it.</span></b></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We figured out how to get this to work and our explosion in growth is a direct correlated reaction to the problems we have solved.</span></div><o:p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">This is where the rubber hits the road when you start to think about how people are coining “I have a cloud based solution” yet when you peel back the layers of the onion they don’t really have a cloud based solution, there’s something that has evolved from a server to a desktop to a datacentre to an ASP to now suddenly adoption a partnership with Microsoft or Amazon…</div></span><o:p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">We are very excited by the impact we can have when we look at this at that level and scale. The reaction we are getting from the community has been “Wow, I didn’t know that”. And it has been exciting.</div></span><o:p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Our industry has been so apt to throwing around buzzwords and eventually throwing around buzzwords with such conviction that people take it for granted and believe it, because they don’t understand what it really means. </div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Today I don’t think our community truly understand, and we hope to fix this, what a true cloud native solution, alongside cloud computing, how impactful this will be. </div></span><o:p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div></o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Every Asset Manager or Hedge Fund today is ever so tightly aware of what data can do for them. Simplifying their ability to navigate through that data has never been more important than it is today. And that’s before you even get to the next shiny object that people are talking about and that’s AI. That’s another conversation. I think people don’t really understand what that means and people are trying to figure out what to do with it. Cloud is an easier thing to for folks to get your arms around. Covid has been an eye opener to our community to figure these things out.</div></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Blockchain / Distributed ledger technology – in use with your firm? Hype or real?</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I think blockchain has a huge opportunity to be impactful in capital markets. I don’t think we are there yet. But if you think about middle and back office processing, blockchain by it’s pure form can help resolve that. You can throw away a lot of things we are burdened with in the middle and back office. It’s way too early for the industry to adopt that, there is still a lot of growth to be done first. We are starting to see opportunities for blockchain in payments, whether through digital currencies or crypto, we are starting to see much more of this. This is happening around us and will make it’s way to the foreground.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Where do you see technology impacting in the next five years on:<o:p></o:p></i></span></p><ol start="1" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;" type="a"><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>You<o:p></o:p></i></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Your firm<o:p></o:p></i></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Wider market</i><o:p></o:p></span></li></ol><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I am hoping that technology simplifies the mess. We are running into the fragmentation of systems, the disparate workflows, the Frankensteins, the technical debt and costs associated with these things are becoming untenable, if not already untenable for some organisations. The bigger you are the bigger the legacy technical debt. The bigger the need to have technology solve these problems that are plaguing organisations. It’s gotten to the point where they cannot make moves, since fixing something here breaks something over there.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We measure technology spend like it’s an opportunity, it’s a mess! Technology spends continues to increase but it’s not for innovation, it’s to fix things that are untenable.<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">This is why I am so excited about Enfusion, we have technology available to solve business problems.</span></b></h3><div><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></b></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Important Notice: </b></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Copyright Alignment Systems 2020 </b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The second paragraph (biography) was supplied by Enfusion as was the picture of Thomas Kim. This interview was conducted remotely over a Zoom call and transcribed by Alignment Systems. No payment was asked for or received either way.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="caret-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Bora Bora, French Polynesia-16.5004126 -151.7414904-44.810646436178843 173.1022596 11.809821236178845 -116.5852404tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1335120992661844060.post-57963007555410842302020-10-19T11:02:00.002+00:002020-10-22T06:48:39.556+00:00CentOS 8 and CodeGen<p><span style="font-family: arial;">Took the opportunity to move some development VMs from CentOS 7 to CentOS 8.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Not sure I like the UX as much (Gnome 3) but I hesitate to comment on FOSS lest someone wade in with both size nines... </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpUYyRHsaN9MiRl6gBSft5OGZ-DCO0qWVRaetafKMyN1YT8dNMJN79wBBKXw0EaPHU3hJ9NrxXH1dChsGSgG9dtkPZfw9UIBC_MpRHp4xRsRhm8BPAPJxeHbxbZUWOB2yz6SYQNU5Xo0c/s2048/SnipImage.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1303" data-original-width="2048" height="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpUYyRHsaN9MiRl6gBSft5OGZ-DCO0qWVRaetafKMyN1YT8dNMJN79wBBKXw0EaPHU3hJ9NrxXH1dChsGSgG9dtkPZfw9UIBC_MpRHp4xRsRhm8BPAPJxeHbxbZUWOB2yz6SYQNU5Xo0c/w640-h408/SnipImage.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16090183677988768931noreply@blogger.com0Kilkenny, Ireland52.6541454 -7.244787924.343911563821152 -42.4010379 80.964379236178843 27.9114621