10 years of advancement! oneZero’s anniversary in detail

“It has become obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” – Albert Einstein

Technological Advancement in Trading

Whilst one of the most intelligent theoretical physicists ever to have lived may well have been absolutely right during his time of technological enlightenment, today’s world is somewhat different. Technology has become an integral component of humanity and is embedded into every aspect of life and modern business, including the capital markets which is both totally dependent on highly advanced, dedicated enterprise systems and at the leading edge of developing them. An important leader in the advancement of this technology is oneZero Financial Systems, which has turned a decade old this month.

Over the past 10 years, the retail FX trading topography has evolved from MetaTrader 4 platforms connected to warehouse brokerage dealing desk in a fixed-spread “you-against-me” environment to today’s ultra-precise live market accessibility with real-time pricing and integration of bridge software companies with prime brokerages. As a result, traders today expect to be closer to real markets.

In the ten years that industry benchmark trading technology and solutions provider oneZero has been established, much as changed. Prime brokerage services are no longer strictly the preserve of hedge funds and large professional trading organizations. Retail traders with deposits of $5,000 can now expect to access liquid markets provided by aggregated feeds from Tier-1 banks.

With elevated expectations of retail customers, today’s MetaTrader 4 user is more akin to a proprietary trader. Retail brokerages now have an extensive understanding of deposit and withdrawal practices, and expectations in the multi-asset derivatives sector are at a very high level around exactly how and where their trade will be executed.

oneZero Celebrates a Decade of Growth

As oneZero celebrated its tenth anniversary at its offices in Limassol, Cyprus, the company’s global reach and contribution to the entire structure of the business in which we operate is more than apparent. oneZero’s senior management and key FX industry stakeholders joined in the company’s tenth-anniversary celebration, during which FinanceFeeds spoke to oneZero CEO Andrew Ralich.

“In marking our tenth anniversary, we continue to focus on the core values of the company which include continually hiring good people, maintaining a focus on high customer service and support and building high-performance technology solutions with auditability and transparency,” said Mr Ralich.

“With multiple regulatory and industry-changing directives by global regulators such as ESMA occurring as the electronic trading industry matures, we are constantly evolving our global infrastructure and connectivity, and we have full availability across our global data centers, including Tokyo’s TY3 for Asia-Pacific markets” he said.

At the event, oneZero shared the emphasis on the company’s move toward institutional business, which is happening at a critical time. FinanceFeeds has long been an advocate of taking the retail technology and prime liquidity providers toward institutional client bases, those being largely hedge funds, proprietary trading companies, algorithmic system developers and wealth managers in major financial centers.

Addressing the 100 attendees from global institutional and retail electronic trading businesses, Mr. Ralich explained, “One of the company’s most important milestones was the creation of Liquidity Hub. This enabled us to provide every client with a node into oneZero’s EcoSystem. We regularly add new providers offering direct market access (DMA) and multi-asset trading who benefit from the integration and access to a new base of customer flow. At the same time, our retail brokerage clients can connect to all markets and asset classes, both listed and over-the-counter.”

Mr Ralich continued by elaborating on the oneZero Data Source offering, “From the EcoSystem trading activity, information is anonymized to create a new industry benchmark. With this data, brokers can ascertain the average industry spread across the entire market, for example, among other advanced analytics. Reviewing your performance as compared to other brokers’ is essential for quality execution.”

“These new metrics run on AWS (Amazon Web Services) and include important data, such as average tick rates and average spreads. If you don’t have a business intelligence analyst on the team, we can provide an analytics package with that data fully included, which represents a savings and helps brokers be efficient when collating important data” explained Mr Ralich.

Several executives in attendance at the event shared their experiences and views of oneZero’s developments over the last ten years by speaking to FinanceFeeds during the course of the event.

Broctagon Prime Executive Director Marios Oikonomides noted, “We find that oneZero is always ready to support. They do a wonderful job of maintaining the difficult task of keeping broker technology efficient.”

Traction Fintech CEO Quinn Perrott added, “If I could sum up oneZero, I’d say that it aggregates the industry and brings everyone together.”

“oneZero is a very credible reference point and ongoing solution for the industry. They understand our business properly and are the most successful platform integrator,” commented Gabriel Styllas, CEO of FiveComply.

James Alexander, Chief Operating Officer of INVAST Global explained to FinanceFeeds during the event “There are two things that immediately come to mind: The company has a clear strategic focus with its business, and it has a clear desire to deliver a multi-asset solution, which at this point in the industry’s evolution both are absolutely vital. At INVAST, we will be launching our DMA multi-asset solution with exchange pricing and exchange execution, listed derivatives via MT5 and oneZero for the first time.”

To celebrate its 10-year corporate milestone, Michael Uttley, oneZero’s Executive Vice President of Process and Communications, shared oneZero’s commitment to donating $10,000 each to 10 different charities over 10 months as part of the company’s interest in giving back to local and global organizations that are serving others, as well as encouraging its employees to volunteer for local charities.

Mr Uttley, based at the company’s global headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, explained to FinanceFeeds, “Charitable contribution is meaningful to us. Each charity we support comes at the recommendation of one or more of our employees. Today we were pleased to meet with and contribute to the Association of Parents and Friends of Children with Heart Disease, a Cyprus-based charity assisting children who need surgery to fly off the island by alleviating the costs and logistics to receive vital treatment,” he said.

As a structured endeavor, oneZero has selected 10 charities based on their contributions to their communities, supporting education and advancing technology across oneZero’s primary corporate locations in the United States, Cyprus, Singapore, Australia and the United Kingdom. A new charity is announced each month.

Perspectives from FinanceFeeds London Thought Leadership Conference

Today’s traders are very much part of the information age, and certainly at the recent Professional Trading Thought Leadership Conference hosted by FinanceFeeds in London, leading institutional hedge fund managers, algorithm developers, listed derivatives experts and proprietary traders with over 30 years of experience each discussed the importance of providing granular and relevant information about the markets to traders so that they are able to analyse their trading in the best possible way.

Brokers needing to elevate their business and increase their efficiency are now at a point where they have to look toward institutional clients and partners, a dynamic that was absolutely evident in the panel’s comments.

Discussing the necessary evolution that the FX industry needs and is absolutely ready for, senior leaders of the electronic trading sector engaged with hedge fund managers, institutional traders and movers and shakers from across the globe, looking closely at how to build a new and sustainable ecosystem for the advanced trader.

Data and AI were very much central talking points, and the panel discussion, led by four elite leaders of some of the world’s most important trading facilities, each with over 30 years of experience, was highly interactive, looking at how to use data. Brokers and liquidity providers were engaged in this discussion with zeal, and the algorithmic traders and hedge fund participants from Silicon Valley to New York and Singapore to London who attended are absolutely aware that the upper echelons of the retail sector is now poised to serve them well, all of which bodes clearly with the direction of growth demonstrated just a short time later by oneZero as it celebrates the passing of the all important 10 year milestone.

Here is a montage of the anniversary celebration: