In 2014, Morgan Stanley’s electronic trading unit will focus on improving the efficiency of its algorithm suite and on the introduction of supporting technology.
“We’ve been building our Asian algorithms platform over the last four years, especially in customised products, switching and pairs algorithms,” said Zach Tuckwell, managing director in Morgan Stanley Hong Kong. “We’re going to focus this year on continuing to make these even more efficient and the new technology we plan to introduce in 2014 will assist that.”
Having made a number of successful hires in 2013, Morgan Stanley has one of the largest electronic trading teams in Asia. For 2014, Morgan Stanley Electronic Trading expects to hire a small number of product experts to round out its roster.
As well as refining the product offering, Morgan Stanley has plans to use technological developments to add further weight to its client coverage capabilities.
“Another application of new technology that we will introduce this year is planned to further reinforce our level of service quality, a factor which is becoming ever more of a differentiator in this market,” added Gabriel Butler, executive director, also based in Hong Kong, “A client can use a variety of firms’ different toolkits, but they are increasingly going on to consider, ‘Which firm is giving me the best information?’ ”
Morgan Stanley’s global electronic trading team has offices in six countries including Australia, Hong Kong and Japan. Their execution management system ‘Passport’ provides access to markets in over 50 countries using a variety of customisable benchmark algorithms, including VWAP, target percentage of volume and arrival price strategies, plus specialised algorithms including portfolio and pairs trader strategies.