For the second half of last week, I was in Singapore attending the FIX Southeast Asia Multi-Asset Trading Conference 2025. It was a fairly engrossing event with plenty of interesting topics being shared and discussed throughout.
The conference started on time, more or less as these thing usually go, with a breakfast session for attendees to get to meet and greet. I'm not a coffee person, so I only helped myself to a croissant and tea while speaking to some of the organising members and the early attendees. It was nice to get to know people from other facets of the industry in sharing experiences and intellect on the vast difference that is global financial markets.
Before you know it, they rang the bell informing us that the event was about to begin and we moved from the breakfast room to the conference room. It was a nice change of pace in having to just focus on one screen for a day rather than multiple screens I would say.
The focus of the event is as per the name itself, that is to understand the technological changes in the industry and how this is all leading to everyone having access and capacity to participate in the many assets that financial markets have to offer. The event agenda comprised of the following topics and speakers:
- Markets in Motion: Structure, Innovation & Market Mechanics (Jean-Remi Lopez, Winnie Khattar, Larry Tabb)
- Accelerating Singapore’s Market Momentum: Liquidity Trends, Initiatives and Product Expansion (Bliss Chang)
- Market in Focus: Vietnam’s Emerging Market Upgrades (J.P. Riña, James Busch, Anthony Le, Hang Le, Khashayar Surti)
- 24/5 Trading of the US Markets: Should Institutional Investors Take Notice? (Abhishek Janaki, Robb Baiad, Jimmy Redbourn, Alexander Thorhauge)
- AI in Action: How Trading Desks are Experimenting with GenAI (Andrew Jim, Benoit Doumas, Pooja Kumari, Michael Smith)
- Fireside Chat: Foster Innovation and the Application of AI (Ankit Mittal, Kenneth Gay)
- Fireside Chat: Asia Unlocked: Liquidity, Access, and Innovation (Meiyan Ding, Kelly Kong)
- Panel: Are Tokenized Assets Ready for Prime Time? (Edward Mangles, Boon-Hiong Chan, Sagar Desai, Andrew Scott)
- Panel: Blueprint for the Truly Multi-Asset Trading Desk (Roland de Marsangy, Michael Bok, Julien de Jaillon, Matthew McLoughlin, Mike Powell)
There were plenty of discussions surrounding the use of AI and how it is transforming the industry as a whole. From back office systems to actual trade implementations, everyone can agree that the speed in which the technology is capturing the space is rather breathtaking. But again, the key thing in moving all of this forward is efficient and proficient usage of the technology and not just for the sake of convenience while sacrificing actual results at the end of the day.
On how AI can be used in trading, I would argue the point made about it being an assistance tool to the trader is perhaps the most compelling. It will take years still, if even possible, for AI to understand the subtle nuances in reading markets and understanding holistically what goes into a trade. It's complex and something even us as humans, with years of expertise and knowledge, still struggle with. And even until this day, the landscape of markets is always evolving and we as traders also have to. So, to expect technology to compensate for that is still quite a stretch I would say.
Sure, there are algos and AI tools spewing out trade systems and pattern recognition and what not. However, it really cannot compare and cannot be expected to perform consistently in the long-run as markets are constantly changing and evolving all at the same time alongside the people who are actually involved in it.
As such, the case of using AI as an assistant tool is made more plausible in it helping us to summarise what may be our best trade executions in terms of timing, asset class, performance selection, etc. And it being able to quickly chart historical patterns in our trading to identify the kind of risk measures that we are using and to tweak that where necessary in our future trades.
All of that seems to carry more weight than expecting AI to replace humans in fundamental trade execution at the end of the day, at least for now.
Besides that, I found the topic of tokenisation to be rather interesting and how it will eventually change up the whole financial system landscape in terms of democratising assets and making them accessible to everyone and anyone.
There's still some ways to go on that of course, as regulatory lines continue to be the main hurdle. There's no one single body in the world that can be tasked to handle this space and that's the main issue that is blocking tokenisation from really taking flight.
But the idea here is one as shared from the conference, that being akin to if you've heard a song playing in the shopping complex. You'll whip out your phone to ask what song that is. And the next step is that you won't be recommended to travel 6-7 kilometres to the record store to pick up a vinyl copy just so you can listen to the song again. You'd instead be pushed to the digital route of listening to the song on iTunes or Spotify and that will be instant, just a touch of a button away.
And that's essentially where we're headed in terms of how democratisation of assets is going to work in the future.
No more having to deal with sell side representatives. No more needing to deal with fund managers. No more having to pay extra fees to invest in funds because you'd otherwise have no access to. Instead when tokenised, access to these funds will easily be with just a tap of a screen on an exchange. Quick, seamless, easy.
I found that part of the conference to be most interesting but again, it's not something that we might see in the next decade. But given time, expect the idea to keep coming back around and regulators having to keep fighting to control the space and prevent necessary fraud and also to *cough* protect their own interests.
In rounding things off, it was a sharing session on how firms are all pivoting towards a genuinely multi-asset trading desk setup. And that's something that we here at investingLive can also relate to. It's not just a one person fit for each and every category in the market, but instead it is a one person fit for all categories.
You can't just be a trader in wanting to focus solely on FX or equities or bonds. In a world that is so fast-paced as it is now and how interconnected markets are, you have to be a trader for everything. And if not, at the very least have the necessary knowledge and understanding in making that connection between markets.
Of course for the bigger firms, it's all about "leveraging assets" to "move the needle", "streamlining" processes to "maximise efficiency and synergy". To cut out the corporate lingo, it's really just about maximising profits and reducing costs.
In this day and age and with the technology that we have, it doesn't make sense to have silo traders who are just focused on their own asset class. You need flexibility and that's where the idea of a multi-asset trading desk comes in.
However, it's not just about the people and the number of staff. It's also about the solution offering to clients and how quickly the desk can pick up on opportunities across different markets and to use that expertise and strong suit to capitalise on trades to make profits.
And that's something I wholeheartedly agree as well. Knowledge is everything when it comes to trading. You may not use everything that you know in a trade but it is always better to be in the know than to be left out and having to be sidelined just because you didn't understand something well enough.
In the current landscape, no person can truly say that they'd be better off trading just FX or equities or bonds or commodities without looking at each and every market. Everything is interconnected and it's always best to understand what is happening in other markets before it comes back to bite at you.
We may not think that we'd need that now but when the opportunity comes, it really, really does pay to know your sh*t. Otherwise, these are still good things to keep in your back pocket.
It's basically just like an umbrella. Even if it's the summer and it almost never rains, it's best to have it in case of that 5% chance it does one day. And in trading, sometimes that 5% chance is all it takes to make or break your livelihood.
In ending, I just want to offer my thanks and a big thumbs up to the FIX Trading Community for organising a really cool and successful event here in Singapore. Looking forward to the next one!
