Aditya Babel, Flow Traders: “This extension will help improve transparency and pricing of different financial assets”

Eurex’ strategy is to offer worldwide accessibility to its markets. Part of this strategy is to provide extended trading hours in Asia for select liquid futures on Eurex Exchange starting from December 2018, thus enabling market participants to extend their business opportunities into the Asian time zones. With benchmark products such as DAX® Futures, Mini-DAX® Futures, EURO STOXX 50® Index Futures, 90 MSCI Futures and Interest Rate Futures, we offer more access to European markets and have laid the foundation to manage interest rate risk and diversify portfolios.

Committed liquidity providers included

Several trading members have already shown a strong commitment to provide liquidity during the extended trading hours, including Aardvark, Barak Capital, Flow Traders, HNK Alpha, Jump Trading International, Korea Investment and Securities, Prelude Capital, RSJ Securities, StarBeta, and XR Trading. This line-up clearly shows the special engagement of companies in Asia-Pacific which we more than welcome.

We talked to Aditya Babel from Flow Traders about his view on the new trading opportunities.

As a committed Market Maker, how do you see the liquidity building during the Asian trading hours?

We intend to show sharp, two-sided markets during the Asian hours because we believe that these markets will attract further interest in Eurex here in the Asian region. Investors will gradually appreciate that they can gain or reduce exposure on screen throughout the trading day in Asia. Hopefully, over time, this will continue to build liquidity.

To us, there clearly is strong demand for our extension. What is your impression?

Eurex offers a wide variety of futures enabling investors to gain exposure to financial markets. Many of these futures originating in Asia already show trading volume, but currently mainly through Inter Dealer Brokers (IDBs). At Flow Traders, we believe that an extension of trading hours will allow these IDBs, but also other market participants to directly access this market and take exposures intraday in Asia.

Market Makers like us will be crucial in showing continuous two-way liquidity in a wide variety of products.

How do you perceive the overall global benefits of our trading hours extension for the financial markets?

Liquidity attracts more liquidity. We believe that this extension will help improve transparency and pricing of different financial assets over the day. Investors will have more avenues to enter as well as more exit positions.