Waters Rankings 2020: Best Transaction-Cost Analysis (TCA) System Provider—Adroit Trading Technologies

For the past two years, Tradeweb won the best transaction-cost analysis (TCA) system provider award, but this year it’s Stamford, Conn.-based Adroit Trading Technologies taking home the gong.

Anil Jaglan, founder and architect of Adroit, says over the past year the firm has made TCA an essential part of the trading workflow for its clients.

“In a typical system, TCA is a post-trade report to flag any major issues,” he says. “Our philosophy has always been to have TCA as a tool for decision-making and that approach has resonated with our clients and they wanted that to be applied to more steps of trading process.”

For example, during the pre-trade process, when portfolio managers want to make big changes to their portfolio or are in a “roll period,” they want to balance the alpha decay of not putting on the positions immediately and the market impact of big trades, Jaglan says. “We give them guidance on liquidity and transaction costs so they can stagger the trades over a period of time, sometimes weeks.”   

For the year ahead, the firm is planning to create a “light” version of its platform for smaller funds that have “less complicated” strategies. Jaglan says it will carve out a version focused on order and execution management, with limited functionality that can be presented at a lower price point.

He says it will also expand Adroit’s discretionary portfolio management capabilities to give discretionary portfolio managers “more flexibility in creating mock portfolios and orders prior to actual order generation.”

The firm’s target market is hedge funds with at least $5 billion under management, and asset managers with at least $50 billion under management, mainly who trade in fixed income, swaps, or foreign exchange (FX). Its primary geographic market is North America, but also has presence in Europe and Asia where it is looking to expand further.