About Andy Maynard

Andy Maynard, global head of equities at China Renaissance Securities, is a proud, card-carrying member of the high-touch trading desk. But how does he keep his desk competitive and efficient? After all, “high touch” means human traders, versus the electronic low-touch systems that have come to dominate the trading of equities globally. A buy side, like a fund management company, will send the broker an order to transact a security within a price range and a timeframe. The broker will try crossing it with other client flow, or perhaps against the firm’s own book – but then it’s up to the broker to call around the market and sell the deal in bits and pieces. For two decades in the U.S., and the past ten years in Asia Pacific, equities brokers have largely gone low-touch, as markets become electronic. They rely on algorithms to execute a variety of strategies across a web of connectivity to local stock markets, usually referred to as “direct market access” or DMA. This trend began as ways to trade cheaply, efficiently, and to avoid the very human temptation of front-running client trades. The low-touch world was really given a boost by European regulation that sought to ensure best execution for customers by unbundling trading, research, corporate access, and other services, so that everything had to be accounted for separately. For many bulge-bracket firms, the numbers for headcount didn’t add up. So: give it to the robots. Andy Maynard brings experience from previous roles at HSBC, CLSA and Merrill Lynch. Andy Maynard holds a BA Hons in History @ University of Westminster.