What has your journey to the trading desk involved? What drew you to trading?
I graduated university in 2021 with a degree in modern languages and started on a graduate scheme that gave me a great overview of the various aspects of a trading role. Starting out, especially coming into the industry without a more typical degree in say economics or finance, I didn’t necessarily know what role would suit me best. What drew me further into my current role as a trader at Liontrust was the more technical and hands-on nature of the role. 
We are fully involved in the investment process across multiple investment strategies and asset classes. This means that there is always something different and interesting to get involved in, and endless people to speak to and learn from. The opportunity to learn how to trade nearly every asset class so early on in my career was something that really appealed. It has helped give me a great overview of how different asset classes react to economic changes and world events, which I’m sure will help me in my future career.
What makes a successful multi-asset trader?
Versatility and prioritisation are key. You need to be able to adapt quickly between asset classes and often multi-task trading across assets at the same time. Every trade needs your full attention, regardless of what you might already be doing in another asset class, and ensuring you prioritise correctly is essential. You need to know the likely price impact of certain economic events and the ever-changing demand and supply picture on each order. Learning similarities in how certain instruments trade and affect each other helps a lot from an execution point of view.
Something equally as important as versatility is the ability to condense and cherry pick the best information, colour and flows, not just for our fund managers, but for ourselves too. Multi-asset traders are lucky enough to receive a wealth of information from endless IBs, emails and calls from counterparties in each asset class. It would be impossible to read and take in every bit of information available to us, but making the most of the access and condensing it down to take in the best bits is an important skill to have.
Why do you think diversity of thought on the trading desk and beyond is important?
Diversity of thought lends itself to better decision making. By incorporating multiple viewpoints and challenging what might be the consensus, you tend to make better decisions overall. Coming into my role with a fresh pair of eyes and less experience than the rest of the team, there have been times when I have questioned why things are done a certain way. We have an open and inclusive culture within the team and Liontrust in general, where we aim for constant improvement and challenge is welcomed. This has aligned with my own style as I feel it is important to always be thinking about how processes can be updated and to adapt with the times, instead of staying static. In our team, we approach problems and trades from different angles given our differing levels of experience, and in turn this leads to more innovative ideas and stronger decision making.
As traders we sit among the investment teams on the floor and are constantly interacting with them. Between the various teams and roles, you inevitably get diversity of thought. Sometimes, the way in which a trader or a PM approaches a trade can differ. The interaction and sharing of ideas when trading ultimately leads to better outcomes – for not just us as traders, but importantly the end client too.
How do you think about liquidity and how do you go about trying to source it in the current environment?
Liquidity is in the forefront of investors’ minds and sourcing it efficiently is vital. We always strive to stay up to date with the latest global market structure trends and developments to achieve this. Given this is continually changing, we are constantly speaking with our counterparties, liquidity providers and exchanges to discuss the changing venue and order type environment. We work with our brokers to customise our algos and smart order routers to better suit our flow type and make sure we are capturing liquidity from the right variety of venues at the right time in the lifecycle of our orders.
Beyond using all the tools and venues that all our peers also have access to, we place a lot of value on interaction with our high touch counterparts. With our involvement in the investment process, we are well placed to decide whether liquidity opportunities make sense for our funds or not. Often, we will suggest to fund managers that they raise orders to benefit from large block crossing opportunities when we do not have live orders on the desk. This enables the funds to obtain advantageous prices, solve liquidity issues before they even arise and helps our fund managers to implement their investment decisions efficiently. Not every investment strategy lends itself to taking full advantage of this, but we aim to add value wherever possible and this has been particularly successful in small- and mid-cap equities.
We put emphasis on this being a two-way relationship between us and the sales trader and we try to give them colour where we can, so they know where we care going forward. They often know where the bodies are buried in certain names, so without having these reciprocal partnerships, we would miss out on potential liquidity opportunities.
How are you as a new trader to the industry leveraging data and TCA to influence execution decisions?
I know that in recent years the way in which trading desks are utilising data has evolved a lot and it is now a starting point to most execution conversations. We have so much data and TCA at our disposal and as a new joiner to the industry there are so many insights that I can take and learn from.
I think it’s important to ensure we take actionable insights from the data and make it digestible both internally and for our end clients. I’m a fan of Power BI and have taught myself how to make TCA more visually appealing by using it. It is our responsibility to know how to use all the tools available to us to help us influence our execution decisions. Recently, I have made a dashboard looking at the performance and liquidity data on our past credit program trades and we can use this for smarter counterparty selection. This helps us in our quest for continuous improvement.
The TCA that we generate ourselves and receive from our brokers is insightful. I take advantage of the opportunity to discuss it with the experts, as I find that people are always willing to give time to those wanting to learn. There’s a clear benefit of coming into the world of TCA fresh without any longstanding trading habits – you are open-minded to tweaking decisions and processes based on the numbers you are presented with, and can make more data-backed decisions and reduce the effects of cognitive biases.