Architects of Electronic Trading: Technology Leaders Who Are Shaping Today's Financial Markets

FOREWORD

This book deals with my fellow technology leaders and collects their insights on current technology trends in the capital markets. Their opinions are representative of how firms in the contemporary financial markets view technology solutions as a means to address business challenges. As a technologist with a long history in electronic capital markets, my target for this foreword is to provide perspective on technology and its market impacts to serve as a backdrop for future developments.

Taking a brief look at the history of electronic markets will provide perspective on the achievements of technology. It also helps us see where technology has yet to impact capital markets and how, if we fail to deal with issues like legacy systems, technology can cause a dangerous loss in agility that will leave the door open for new entrants.

Technology has been chiefly responsible for a transformation in the financial markets akin to what occurred in the manufacturing industry during the great Industrial Revolution. As in those days, technology is being applied to revolutionize business processes. The results are also similar to the improvements of the Industrial Revolution: better quality at reduced cost and the opening up of new business opportunities. Thus, a logical hypothesis is that information technology holds great promise for our industry going forward.

As an industry, technology has propelled our transformation from one characterized by mainly manual, human interactions toward ...