The global equities division of Swiss investment bank UBS has launched algorithmic trading capabilities in Brazil for its international clients.
UBS will initially offer VWAP, TWAP and Volume Inline, a trading strategy that enables an investor to execute an order correlated to available liquidity. The algorithms can be used in conjunction with the bank’s direct market access (DMA) service to BM&F BOVESPA, the domestic equities and derivatives exchange, enabling orders to be sent directly via UBS’s Pinpoint execution management system, or other order or execution management systems, without any intervention from the broker.
“We gained a tremendous amount of experience over the last year with our direct market access offering in Brazil, and our intention has always been to add algorithmic trading,” said Owain Self, head of algorithmic trading for EMEA and the Americas at UBS. “Our successful DMA platform provided the ideal knowledge base to build algorithmic strategies for the Bovespa in a truly custom way – specifically geared to the unique attributes of this market.”
UBS’s move closely follows Bank of America’s launch of 15 equity and six derivatives algorithms in Brazil at the end of October. Credit Suisse’s Advanced Execution Services unit introduced a suite of algorithms in the country in September, and agency broker ITG launched DMA and algorithmic trading in Brazil in August in conjunction with local broker Ágora.