IHS Markit’s thinkFolio investment platform is partnering with Wave Labs, a firm that has created fixed income tools to deliver a functional window for traders.
Wave Labs’ Electronic Liquidity Seeking Application (eLiSA) is an execution management system (EMS) that cuts away repetitive tasks. Using cloud-based application programming interfaces (APIs) to route orders and complete trades, it starts by eliminating the need for liquidity venue-provided user interfaces (UIs). eLiSA offers a set of both pre-trade and during-trade analytics, as well as multiple order types, automated liquidity seeking and liquidity provisioning features.
According to Wave Labs CEO & Founder, Miles Kumaresan, “Wave Labs’ success lies in the unconventional way in which we went about gaining an edge in fixed income trading. It started with defining a workflow that is both liquidity discovery-centric and uniquely fixed income in focus. With this at its foundation, Wave Labs set out to create a range of tools that supported the different pieces of the trading puzzle. These components collectively form a fluid workflow that assists traders at every step of the trading lifecycle. A trader decides when and what he or she wants to use, depending on the task at hand.”
eLiSA has an execution analysis module that developed specifically for fixed income by targeting the documentation requirements of high-touch trading processes such as voice.
Kumaresan adds, “Classical transaction cost analysis (TCA) is a dated concept that has not evolved over the years to meet the expectations of today’s best execution committees or institutional clients.”
Commenting on the partnership, Brett Schechterman, global head of thinkFolio at IHS Markit, said, “The plug-and-play integration of thinkFolio with eLiSA offers our end-users a smooth workflow between two complementary technologies that are specialists in their respective fields. While eLiSA is primarily a trading technology, it also seeks to address portfolio managers’ requirements from a liquidity and price discovery angle. These intraday market insights go hand-in-hand with thinkFolio’s bottom-up analytics, exposure monitoring flexibility and sophisticated portfolio modelling capabilities. When married, as has been our objective with similar alliances focused on other asset classes, these technologies provide a cohesive workflow that enhances front-office productivity and perpetually enriches communication between portfolio managers and the trading desk.”
thinkFolio and eLiSA will provide mutual clients with workflows by leveraging cloud-based APIs and one another’s functional strengths across the investment lifecycle. Through the extension of thinkFolio’s suite of interoperable alliances, clients have access to a suite of options to use across their operating models – from portfolio construction and pre-trade risk analytics to execution and post-trade performance attribution.
