FX algos – why now for the buyside?

All the surveys indicate growing take-up of FX algos among corporates and the real-money community. But aren’t they the cautious ones? William Essex wonders how today’s regulatory environment could possibly be a good time to try a new approach to transacting. Algorithms work well with regulation. They’re good at stealth, but they also deliver an unambiguous audit trail. “Algorithmic execution in FX is here to stay,” says Evangelos Maniatopoulos, global head of AES FX product and trading, Credit Suisse, understandably. All the surveys indicate growing take-up of FX algos among corporates and the real-money community. But aren’t they the cautious ones? William Essex wonders how today’s regulatory environment could possibly be a good time to try a new approach to transacting. Algorithms work well with regulation. They’re good at stealth, but they also deliver an unambiguous audit trail. “Algorithmic execution in FX is here to stay,” says Evangelos Maniatopoulos, global head of AES FX product and trading, Credit Suisse, understandably.

All the surveys indicate growing take-up of FX algos among corporates and the real-money community. But aren’t they the cautious ones? William Essex wonders how today’s regulatory environment could possibly be a good time to try a new approach to transacting. Algorithms work well with regulation. They’re good at stealth, but they also deliver an unambiguous audit trail. “Algorithmic execution in FX is here to stay,” says Evangelos Maniatopoulos, global head of AES FX product and trading, Credit Suisse, understandably.