Waters Rankings 2013: Best Agency Brokerage — ITG

Jamie Selway, head of electronic brokerage at ITG, says the firm’s innovative algorithms and global footprint have been leading drivers for the broker. “If you’re going to trade, for example, a volume-weighted average price (VWAP)-based algo with us in the US, it’s going to look and feel like it does in Canada, Brazil, Europe or Asia-Pacific, and that’s hard to do,” he says.

Of the many enhancements ITG has made to its offering, three stand out: First, it has substantially upgraded the software around Posit Alert, its block-crossing mechanism; second, ITG rewrote its limit-order placement logic and deployed that throughout its entire algorithmic suite; and finally, in June, it launched Algo Prism, its web-based visibility tool that allows users to generate visibility on an order-by-order basis.

In times of constrained liquidity and fragmentation—and the risk and cost that comes with those conditions—firms are pushing harder than ever for cutting-edge algorithms and top-tier crossing capabilities.