Boston, October 6, 2016 – Gone are the days when telex machines and telephones were the only tools available and sell-side banks held all the power. Since the new millennium, various independent software vendors have brought electronic-trading platforms of all shapes and sizes to the FX industry. Adding to this complexity in market infrastructure, the low return environment since the global financial crisis has elevated FX as an alternative asset class, and buy-side firms are now seeking to extract alpha in addition to mitigating risk. For institutional investors and their asset owner clients, has managing an international investment portfolio’s FX risk become a core trading desk function that requires sophisticated trading platforms?

This report examines the latest front-office FX analytics and e-trading platform offerings. The background research that supports this report was conducted by Aite Group via a series of vendor briefings, face-to-face meetings, live product demos, and WebEx demos that took place between January and May 2016. Profiled platforms include Bloomberg FXGO, Charles River IMS, FlexTrade FlexFX, ITG Triton EMS, Portware FX, and TradingScreen TradeFX. It is the second in a series on buy-side trading technology—find the first here.

This 54-page Impact Note contains 24 figures and 11 tables. Clients of Aite Group’s Institutional Securities & Investments service can download this report, the corresponding charts, and the Executive Impact Deck.

This report mentions Abel Noser, Activ Financial, Advent, BlackRock Solutions, CLS Bank, DowJones Telerate, Equinix, Eze Software Group, Fidessa, Hanwick, Hotspot (BATS), ICAP (NEX Group), Interactive Data Corp, Linedata, ORATS, SimCorp, Spryware, State Street Bank, SWIFT, Symphony, and Thomson Reuters.