London – 23 May 2024: Almost 90% of proprietary trading firms are planning to increase trading headcount in 2024 following a period of strong performance, the latest Acuiti Proprietary Trading Management Insight Report has found.
The quarterly report, which was released today and is produced in partnership with Avelacom, is based on a survey of the Acuiti Proprietary Trading Expert Network, a group of senior executives at over 100 global proprietary trading firms and provides insights into the key trends facing the community.
The report found that developer headcount was also set to grow in 2024 as 75% of firms planned an increase. The plans to hire traders represent a significant increase on 2023 when just 58% of firms planned to increase headcount in this role. However, demand for operations executives and network engineers has fallen compared with 2023.
The planned hiring comes as firms reported that wage appreciation had slowed, although it remained elevated for developer and network engineer roles, where wage increases of more than 25% year-on-year were not uncommon. However, in 2023, wage increases of 26%-50% were reported.
Ross Lancaster, head of research at Acuiti said: “The last few years have been strong ones in terms of business performance for many proprietary trading firms As wage appreciation slows, firms have the confidence to expand their teams and continue to grow their businesses.”
Aleksey Larichev, CEO of Avelacom, said: “We are glad to see such positive sentiment in our core market. This gives us the confidence to continue expanding our connectivity and IT infrastructure solutions across all global financial markets, and especially for critical use cases where low latency is a must”.
Other key findings in this quarter’s report include:
- Almost a quarter of proprietary trading firms are considering bringing front-office technology in-house
- Over 40% of firms not currently trading on Indian markets are considering doing so
- Prop firms that trade ETFs in Europe think proposals to increase financial penalties will not address settlement failure issues
In addition, we cover concentration concerns, attitudes to new exchange launches and contract competition, and quarterly sentiment.
Download the full report here: https://www.acuiti.io/proprietary-trading-management-insight-report-q2-2024
About Acuiti
Acuiti is a management intelligence platform designed to provide Senior Industry Professionals in the Derivatives Industry with high-value insight into industry-wide performance and business operations. Acuiti provides a platform through which our exclusive network of Senior Industry Executives can share and source information on day-to-day operational challenges, providing them and their management teams with increased transparency and in-depth analysis to make more informed decisions and benchmark company performance. Financial Institutions benefiting from our services include Banks, Non-bank FCMs, Brokers, Proprietary Trading Firms, Hedge Funds and Asset Managers.
About Avelacom
Avelacom’s low latency connectivity, IT infrastructure and data solutions improve market making, arbitrage and liquidity aggregation strategies, all of which are highly sensitive to latency. It provides access to 80+ liquidity centers offering best-in-market latencies and 99.9% uptime. Covering a wide variety of exchanges including equity, FX, commodity, crypto and derivatives, Avelacom’s solutions are asset neutral. The company is particularly well known for offering the lowest latencies to/from APAC, LATAM, the Middle East, South Africa and Eastern Europe. The company’s strength comes from its own global network based on both fiber and wireless technologies.
