January 2014
Advantage Futures experienced a significant increase of activity in the United Kingdom this past year. We sat down with the Advantage Futures London business development team of Brendan Sullivan, Mike O’Malley, Bill King and Clayton Passero to better understand their perspectives on growth opportunities in London.
ADVANTAGE IN LONDON
London has long been a key center for the world’s financial markets. London remains a leader in trading foreign exchange, interest rates, metals and energy futures. Advantage Futures has serviced clearing and brokerage clients from London for many years, and this year, made a strategic decision to focus efforts on building new relationships in London. This effort includes a significant commitment to invest time and resources to send representatives to London on a regular basis. Traders prefer to do business with people they know and trust. They place high expectations on their Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) as it is the custodian of their funds, the clearer of their trades and often their technology provider. Ultimately, providing these services is critical for a strong client-FCM relationship. Advantage works diligently to establish relationships in London with independent traders, trading firms, exchanges and third party providers. Advantage provides optimized trading solutions for our clients, whether they utilize automated trading strategies or point-and-click methods.
TRADING SOLUTIONS
“Traders demand low latency solutions, especially for trading on European exchanges,” says Clayton Passero. “Advantage offers a variety of low latency trading solutions from London on all the major futures trading platforms including Trading Technologies, Stellar Trading Systems and CQG. Advantage clients who utilize these platforms are able to connect locally. We facilitate point-and-click trading, auto-spreading and hosting solutions for CME Group, Eurex, Liffe and ICE.”
PRODUCTS TRADED
London based proprietary trading firms and professional traders actively trade on CME Group, Eurex, ICE and Liffe exchanges. The majority utilize spread trading strategies and primarily trade interest rates, energies and indices. Recently, there has been a significant interest in the CBOE Futures Exchange (CFE) VIX product. Advantage is a full clearing member of CFE.
WHAT SETS ADVANTAGE FUTURES APART
“One of the first things I mention to traders about Advantage is that we do not engage in any proprietary trading,” says Mike O’Malley. “Advantage operates strictly as a client driven FCM. We provide clients with quality clearing services and great technology. We do not compete against our clients for trades or traders, which makes Advantage a client service focused firm, not a proprietary trading firm.
”Brendan Sullivan, adds “I have heard from many London traders about the importance of timely responses from futures brokers. Advantage Futures stands apart from our competition by being responsive to our client’s needs.”
Advantage offers 24/6 IT, operational and execution support ensuring an Advantage representative is always available.
EDUCATING TRADERS
Advantage hosted seminars with the CME Group that allowed industry experts to speak about specific trading ideas or software in order to assist traders. We also traveled to London in conjunction with the CBOE Futures Exchange to help promote their VIX product. The CBOE just expanded the trading hours for VIX making it more accessible to European traders.
2014
“We made great headway over the past year and realize the tremendous opportunity in London,” stated Bill King. “The Advantage name and reputation continues to gain recognition which supports our efforts.”
We will continue regular trips to London to support current clients and engage our growing client base.
