Fidessa group plc has today published a new paper that looks at the ways in which high and low touch trading are adapting to meet the realities of trading in capital markets today.

New regulations such as unbundling are challenging the traditional relationship-based approach to sales trading whilst, at the same time, the liquidity spectrum across high and low touch activities is diverging and becoming more granular. This means that the either/or approach of low and high touch is simply too crude a reflection of the requirements of the buy-side. Worse still, the duplication of infrastructure adds unnecessary operating cost at a time when the industry is already struggling to deliver acceptable rates of return to shareholders.

In this paper Fidessa's Director of Group Strategy, Steve Grob, describes how the best approach is to abandon these blunt concepts and, instead, replace them with a more nuanced, converged approach that leverages technology where it is common to both and yet still empowers the different activities required. Not only does this save money, but it offers a better approach for clients as orders can take advantage of both low and high touch liquidity simultaneously.