All Eyes on Asia: the 9th Asia Pacific Trading Summit

The 9th Asia Pacific Trading Summit resembled the trading world it represents: growing, energetic and varied.  More than 500 delegates converged on Hong Kong to connect and take in the leading trends in Asia Pac trading. Andy Xie, independent economist, formerly Head of Asia Pacific Economics for Morgan Stanley, gave a riveting presentation on the growth of the Chinese market. Benjamin Pedley of HSBC Private Bank outlined the necessity of navigating a changing risk and policy environment.

Aggregation was argued over during an engaging panel featuring Kent Rossiter, RCM Asia Pacific, and Will Psomadelis, Schroders Investment Management, who also participated in the panel discussion on the benefits of High Frequency Trading (HFT) on liquidity, including John Fildes, GETCO Asia and Matt Saul, FIL Investment Management.

True to the democratic roots of the FIX Protocol, each session featured audience voting on topics including the long term effect of large retail flows on prices (Negative - 36%), the likelihood of a double-dip global recession (Likely - 65%), the importance of unified multi-asset class trading platforms (Very Important - 40%), prospects for regulatory arbitrage in Asia (Yes - 71%), the need for regulatory control of HFT (In Favor - 70%) and the most popular TCA metric (VWAP - 55%).

Highlighting the growing awareness of regional competition and updates in technology and strategy, representatives from the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Bombay Stock Exchange, Stock Exchange of Thailand, Australian Securities Exchange, Singapore Exchange and Hong Kong Stock Exchange shared their thoughts on questions such as what makes an exchange competitive and the avenues for pan-region trading venues. Not to be out done, the conference closed with a video recap of the day through the eyes of the ever witty Joel Hurewitz.