Profile: Credit Suisse's algo team on automating OTC markets

A big chunk of tomorrow’s over-the-counter market could look something like today’s equity markets – fragmented, standardised, automated – and dealers plan to expand their existing algorithmic trading businesses as a result. To find out what the future could look like, Clive Davidson talks to the algo trading team at Credit Suisse

Once upon a time, equity trading was a fairly simple matter – stock exchanges were the only pools of liquidity, offering traders and investors a single price. Something similar was true of foreign exchange – a market participant might call a few dealers for a quote, but that was as far as it went. Both markets are almost unrecognisable today. Electronic trading has created a variety of liquidity pools, both private and public – or, in the jargon of the markets, dark and lit. This complexity