Stino Milito is Co-COO of DASH Financial Technologies.
What was the highlight of 2019?
The highlight of 2019 was growing our equity option routing market share to nearly 16% of the daily OCC volume. This growth is a testament to the DASH team’s hard work and the irrefutable value our routing solution continues to deliver clients.
Additionally, we are extremely pleased with our increasing relevance in helping our clients optimize liquidity capture. The DASH ATS is a great example. In 2019, we became a meaningful place to source equity option liquidity. Whether it’s reducing exchange fees, augmenting on screen liquidity or providing price improvement – clients benefit.
With the launch of SENSOR Dark this year, we aggregate all sources of alternative liquidity from dark pools to Single Dealer Platforms, enabling our clients to achieve optimal levels of transparency, performance and control in their attempt to minimize footprints when seeking dark liquidity in a fragmented market.
What are your expectations for 2020?
We expect 2020 to bring a return of volatility to the market. A combination of the market coming off a huge 2019, an uncertain political environment and the Presidential election should result in many trading opportunities.
To address the 2020 market environment, DASH recently launched a new and enhanced suite of volatility products designed to help traders when trading Vega baskets and single stock vol orders. We believe these products will see broad adoption next year.
How have customer pain points changed from a year ago?
We are still seeing many of the same issues – trading desks are being asked to do more with less, regulatory requirements are growing, and the need to make sense of all the data available is as pressing as it’s ever been, stressing banks’ technology priorities.
Fortunately, we have developed an advanced suite of technology tools to help clients solve many of these problems. Whether it is algorithms designed to mimic how a trader would work an order manually – like our SENSOR Improve product does – or our DASH360 analytics platform – which allows clients to analyze all aspects of their routing in real-time or historically – we give our clients the tools they need to gain an edge in today’s environment where banks and broker-dealers are fast realizing they don’t have the resources to build all the functionality clients require.
