Trading Technologies has been expanding its SaaS technology platform across capital markets asset classes, including foreign exchange.
Tomo Tokuyama, EVP and Managing Director, FX at Trading Technologies, provided a snapshot of TT’s FX business earlier this year, and last week Traders Magazine caught up with him for a year-end update.
Let’s look back at the year for Trading Technologies’ FX business. One news item was TT FX connecting with EBS and FX Spot+, which was announced in May. What’s the significance?
We connected to EBS Market, EBS Direct, EBS Spot+, and EBS FX Link. And we’ve always had CME FX futures. So I believe we are the only third-party platform that has all CME FX products under one roof, and for folks who want to trade CME products across the board, they can do so under our umbrella.
That’s been quite positive for us. EBS has been a good partner in terms of introducing us to clients who are interested in consolidating. Similar to Cboe, I think EBS is honest about their capability in the EMS [Execution Management System] space, and they are looking at us as a partner or vendor of choice. Of course they’re connected to other platforms and they don’t favor us over anyone else, but I think a big selling point for our integration with them was that they didn’t have an EMS that’s capable of doing the things that our EMS can do. So they’ve been generous in speaking to the merits of TT and the value we add.
The biggest trade this year for us, has been what we call the EFP [Exchange of Futures for Physical], or the basis trade. This is in spot metals, which trade as a currency in the FX world. So with spot gold and silver, because the basis blew out this past year in those two pairs, they’ve been using our Autospreader tool, which will trade that basis for you. We’ve had a lot of traction there because the gold, silver, platinum and palladium play has been so big this year.
We had thought that our strategy with our Autospreader was geared toward the buy side, on the premise that sell-side banks had their own platforms and systems. So we were pleasantly surprised that sell-side market makers were interested in our offering, because everyone is trading the EFP – they were just doing it synthetically using two separate systems. If they’re TT users, they trade the futures on TT and they trade the OTC FX portion elsewhere, and the lag between the two is huge because you’re clicking on one platform or screen and then clicking again on a separate platform or screen. Our Autospreader tool automates that for you, and when sell-side folks found out that they could do that on TT, it was sort of a light bulb moment, and we’re still getting a lot of inquiries regarding that product.
TT FX added support for bank algorithms in 2025?
Bank algos in FX have really come up in the past five to seven years, and today, there are FX-only platforms that will host bank algos. We made the decision to launch this out of our FX GUI [Graphical User Interface], but our users are coming from the futures and options space, so they’re multi-asset traders. That’s the power of TT in this multi-asset play.
In my last seat in trading, we had different platforms for every asset class – all of it was separate. But at TT, we’re consolidating everything. When you think about the spirit of consolidation and having one system, the idea was to integrate the bank algos directly into the classic TT space, so that multi-asset traders can click on the same drop-down bar where they see their futures algos, and the FX algos will appear. Rather than having to launch FX algos out of a separate platform, our platform will be fully integrated in one space. This is where we’re able to win a lot of clients over.
TT FX supports both full-amount and RFQ workflows?
Our FX offering is quite unique, as FX users are not used to trading FX in the traditional F&O [Futures and Options] ladders. The FX GUIs that exist today trade in what are called tile widgets, which are derived from the old EBS terminal and are the market standard in terms of view. The way we built our offering was to have sweepable markets in the ladder and full amount in the standard tile widgets. This way, we offer a unique trading experience for both traditional F&O users who want to trade FX in a ladder, and for traditional FX traders who want to trade via tile widgets for full amount FX markets – and regardless of how it’s traded, both are fully integrated with the futures and options workspace. So when users log in to TT, they see another drop-down that says TT FX, which opens essentially a new GUI, but within the same space. It’s going to give users the view that they want, and the view that they’re used to, when they trade full amount FX products.
That tile widget – the new GUI which we’re calling FX workspace – has direct LPs [Liquidity Providers] for the first time. This means we’re going to have the banks and non-bank market makers pricing directly. So for example if we go to a client that only trades with direct LPs and not on venues like EBS or Cboe, as long as they have bilateral credit they can trade with the likes of Goldman, UBS, JP Morgan and other big banks, we can aggregate all those liquidity pools from the direct LPs themselves, and we can display that in a way they’re used to seeing through the FX tile widgets.
With our full FX offering, we support spot FX, forwards, swaps, and NDFs [Non-Deliverable Forwards].
What has been the growth of TT FX?
We’ve had triple-digit growth this year compared with last year. And we have grown every quarter since we launched. We’ve increased revenue every month, and we’ve increased volumes and revenue every quarter we’ve been live.
Looking to the future, I think we’re going to have an even larger boost, because most of our large FX clients are going to require that tile widget, and I think that’s where most of our volume for next year is going to come from.
What’s in store for 2026?
The TT FX product is done, it is created. Next year is about distributing the product.
Any TT user who trades FX elsewhere, we want as a TT FX client next year. We think we have a legitimate value proposition for them to trade on TT, because we consolidate their workflow front to back. If they trade FX on a separate platform, we’re going to offer that within TT, and that’s going to allow them to get some screen real estate back that they now use today for multiple platforms.
