Analysis by Credit Suisse of its Advanced Execution Services (AES®) FX execution performance data during the volatile market conditions in March has provided further insights as to why working an order should increasingly be considered by FX traders during a crisis, it says. During the volatile market conditions, both the AES FX algo and eFX streaming businesses have seen impressive growth in client trading activity.
The execution performance of the AES FX platform has proven to be predominantly stable across this and other key historical market dislocation events, says Evangelos Maniatopoulos, Global Head of Advanced Execution Services (AES) FX Product and Trading at Credit Suisse. “While the number of FX algo providers is much larger nowadays, Credit Suisse’s AES FX business is uniquely placed in being one of the few FX algo providers with first-hand trading experience going back to the subprime mortgage financial crisis of 2008,” he adds.
The bank compared historical AES FX algo trading activity across a number of major market events (subprime mortgage crisis, EU sovereign debt crisis, US sovereign debt downgrade, SNB EUR/CHF unpeg in addition to the latest Covid-19 crisis) and observed key trends in relation to the use of FX algos.
This included an overall increase in their usage vs. the equivalent pre-crisis periods and a trend towards higher use of opportunistic and hybrid algorithmic strategies.
