John Bartleman is President and CEO of TradeStation.
What were the key theme(s) for your business in 2023?
What we have observed in the financial services industry over the past year has been the growing presence of individual traders and investors and their desire to better understand the risks and benefits of complex products, including leveraged ETNs and derivatives, like equities options and commodity futures. At TradeStation Securities, we have enhanced our trading and analysis tools and educational resources to cater to this need.
What are your expectations for 2024?
Individual investors and traders and smaller institutions are getting more active. The notion of the amateur “day trader” looking for the next meme stock appears to be waning, with more of our customers demanding institutional-level trading tools and better access to information. We believe this demand will continue to grow globally in 2024.
We’re seeing a particular uptick in two trading trends that reflect our customers’ sophistication and risk appetite: zero-days to expiration (ODTE) options and futures trading.
If the financial markets experience lower trading volatility and lower interest rates in 2024, we may see an increase in M&A activity and potentially increased earnings growth returning to the S&P 500 companies. We believe lower volatility and lower interest rates may also increase risk appetite among investors.
What trends are getting underway that people may not know about but will be important?
The creation of new equities options and futures products has created a tremendous opportunity for online broker-dealers and futures commission merchants, like TradeStation Securities. TradeStation Securities saw its equities options volume grow by 30% in 2022 and 2023 compared to the previous two-year period. The wider availability of ODTE options, in particular, has given sophisticated traders a new way to speculate and hedge their risk, a trend we expect will continue throughout 2024.
What are your customers’ pain points and how have they changed from a year ago?
Our customers demand access to information and the ability to leverage that information to trade the financial markets with sophisticated yet easy-to-use tools for all asset classes and order types. It is our job at TradeStation to deliver on this challenge so that our customers may build and execute on their trading strategies.
