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post-trade data that is supplied
by the firm’s Atlanta-based team
of quantitative analysts, which
Miller terms as a “great asset” to
the firm.
“Pre-trade analysis is obviously
very important to work out a strat-
egy and we can always learn from
our post-trade data,” he explains.
“We can run certain scenarios on
the data we’ve got and we have a
very adept team in Atlanta whose
job it is to analyse our data; the
pre-trade, in-trade, post-trade data
to come up with suggestions and,
in some cases, intelligent strate-
gies to guide our flow in future.”
Miller also highlights the expe-
rience and expertise that the desk
possesses, blended with the indi-
vidual skillsets that each member
brings to the team – the electronic
guy, the older guy, the other mar-
ket maker, as he puts it – forming
a tactical unit for trading decisions
based on the strategic input of the
fund managers which is adaptable
to the more irrational nature of
the markets which will require a
range of trading decisions to be
made.
Price maker
Miller joined Invesco after his
six-year stint with Tradepoint at
its UK headquarters in Henley-
on-Thames offices when the firm
was still operating as Perpetual in
2001. At that time, Miller recalls,
the firm didn’t have any traders,
with a team of fund managers do-
ing their own dealing. The change
occurred following the takeover
by Invesco, which added a Hen-
ley-based trading desk to the mix.
“The fund managers never had,
dare I say, the luxury of having
their own dedicated trader in the
past and I’d never had the luxury
of ever working so closely with the
fund managers,” he recalls. “So,
the two us, it was a nervous sort
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of positioning, which lasted a little while until we
understood each other better.”
The experience gained through his time on the
London Stock Exchange floor and with the launch
of Tradepoint, particularly on the price making side,
proved invaluable during those formative years on
the Invesco desk, according to Miller. The mindset
of being a price maker, as opposed to a price taker, of
being central to and in control of that process, proved
“You can only really make a price if you know as
much information as possible: The way to be a
good trader is to see everything, to know what
everybody else is doing without them knowing
what you’re doing.”
to be a “very good grounding” both at the time and
since, to be able to advise and develop the right
strategy.
“You can only really make a price if you know as
much information as possible: The way to be a good
trader is to see everything, to know what everybody
else is doing without them knowing what you’re
doing,” he says.
Now the relationship between the traders and fund
managers is that much closer, both due to a necessity
imposed by different operating conditions and an
evolution of the structure of the firm, but Miller says
that the two entities are still “very distinctive areas.”
“There may be certain strategies or price points
that the fund managers are more interested in or
there may be certain sectors they are more interest-
ed in” Miller explains. “We are the eyes and ears of
the market. When it comes down to it, we’re not just
traders – although 90% of what we do is trading –
but a certain amount of what we do provides market
colour and some advice, and we do feed into the
investment process.”
Of course, the trading desk in Henley itself has
grown and evolved during the intervening years,
operating within a global infrastructure, and Miller
now acts as the head trader of a team of six traders,
reporting to the firm’s head of trading for EMEA
equities and Henley fixed income, Paul Squires.
The UK desk covers EMEA across a range of equity
classes, although primarily in equities, working in
tandem with its US and APAC colleagues, backed
up by the team of quants that Miller describes as “a
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