Buy-side Perspectives Issue 8 | Page 27

Foreign exchange
Relationships with brokers continue to be a primary concern for the foreign exchange trading desk in 2017 ; however , one of the top concerns now is the increasing “ juniorisation ” of sell-side sales traders . Several traders on the buy-side are worried that experienced sell-side sales traders have left the industry in recent years ; these have been replaced by much more junior staff , who lack the experience to provide the same level of support to the buy side . This was consistently mentioned by several participants at the 5th ATF Global Summit in February 2017 , and all participants were agreed on the issue .
On the technology side , automation is becoming increasingly significant for traders in foreign exchange . Buy-side traders are looking to simplify the trading process , with some trading desks choosing to automate everything below a threshold size , such as £ 100,000 . Some firms are already automating one in three of their tickets , and that number is expected to rise in the near future .