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and you’re fine. But there is a point
where markets change and active
fund managers, and Liontrust in
particular, can do well. We’ve been
here for a long time, through both
good and difficult times and have
the consistency of process to meet
our investors' needs."
Mixed skills
For a firm that has sizeably in-
creased both its total assets under
management and its geographical
reach, McLoughlin is aware that
a duality of skillsets are required
to both meet its current challeng-
es and to push on into its next
evolutionary phase as the trading
environment changes around it.
“Having data scientists and
programmers is becoming more
important in everybody’s infra-
structure, and we’re no different;
Liontrust has invested in that area,”
he details. “Now we on the buy-
side are able to harness the data
that we have always had, to actu-
ally find meaning in it and get it to
give us actionable insights. That’s
truly exciting because you had it all
along, you just couldn’t see it.”
These “hard skills” have become
an integral part of the modern
trader’s daily routine as the pace
of technological development
continues to accelerate. The ability
to assimilate and interpret data is
critical to this, with McLoughlin
pointing out that there is no value
in possessing “reams of data” if the
only result for the desk are hypo-
theticals; being able to understand
fluctuations in the market struc-
ture, or even microstructure, and
how that will impact on the desk’s
trades all result from being able to
interpret the data properly.
“Some of the tiny nuances in the
market microstructure might seem
really unimportant, but when it
comes to trading, they can make a
huge difference,” he asserts. “The
28 // TheTrade // Fall 2019
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