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The landscape is littered with the ghosts of failed products, platforms, businesses and good ideas that were too expensive, not properly targeted or launched before their time. Is multi-asset trading, or the ability, from a single platform, to trade across products, one of these flawed concepts?
It's easy to blow off multi-asset trading as DOA. Trading across products violates almost everything I have learned, namely: Wall Street makes money through focus; systems developed for multiple purposes serve none; the industry's technologies follow P&L codes, which are vertically (by product) not horizontally (by customer) aligned; and if you make it too complex, nothing gets deployed.
But we shouldn't write off the trend so quickly. First, focus becomes less important as more products are electronically traded. Computers can focus on virtually everything simultaneously (given enough resources) and increasingly are calling the shots. While good human traders can...