Monday: AI at the House of Lords. Fintech Leader or Follower?
Rupert Osborne, a well known FX industry stalwart, took part in a private summit at the House of Lords, where over 20 executives and policymakers gathered in the Palace of Westminster to unpack artificial intelligence’s role in the UK economy.
Sessions covered workforce upskilling, governance frameworks, and growth potential across sectors. From an FX industry lens, it prompts a reality check: is fintech genuinely pioneering AI development, or are we just tracking what regulators and other industries prioritise?
A New York lawyer specialising in tech patents and startups I spoke with recently is bearish. She sees an AI bubble ready to burst in the US, with hype outpacing sustainable use cases.
We’ve all seen the pitfalls: FX firms beta-testing AI agents for market insights or client advice, only to pull them after beta versions delivered unreliable data. At what point do we trust LLMs feeding traders’ decisions? Global governments from Whitehall to Washington are now treating AI as strategic infrastructure. The question is whether it transforms trading or is still a nascent technology that will become more comprehensive in its research ability with more development.
Tuesday: Capital.com’s $1.27 Trillion Q1. Oil, Gold, and the Volatility Trap
Capital.com dropped their Q1 numbers: $1.27 trillion in client trading volumes, a monster quarter driven by geopolitical shocks affecting oil and gold. I cannot help but look at how this is very relevant to the way that CFD brokers everywhere have feasted on XAU/USD and how crude oil became a cash machine. But here’s the rub: when volatility normalises, as it always does, how do generic platforms keep the lights on?
This came to such a poignant place within my own mind that I put my opinion on it just before these massive first quarter results were released. Firms leaning on temporary surges mask legacy weaknesses: siloed back ends, narrow asset slates, and dated UIs that can’t compete with neo-bank super apps. Without cross-margining cores and front-end flexibility, you’re just riding the wave until the next lull hits. Have a read and see if you agree with me:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hctYNbcFWL1kGGp4hLuLTqu7SMgbGX15irBa5nCj5ds/edit?tab=t.0
Wednesday: Blueberry Markets’ Masterclass in Local Dominance + Global Ambition
Revisiting my Sydney conversation with Zoran Kresovic at Blueberry Markets felt like bookending a decade. When I first visited Blueberry Markets shortly after their launch around 2016, they were a startup CFD brokerage. Today the company is one of Australia’s recognized names, with a rock-solid domestic client base.
Zoran broke down their recipe: the company’s focus on Australian traders’ needs first with local support has been instrumental, and it is interesting to see a company actually concentrating on its local audience when some others in the region have gone offshore and are looking at less well organized markets just to save regulatory hassle. Zoran told me that they are not opposed to global expansion, and we discussed Latin America, a market worlds apart from Australia’s regulated polish. It demands local expertise on everything from payment systems to compliance and customer experience. Their method? Build critical domestic mass, then scale smartly without diluting the core.
Listen to the podcast here: https://www.integral.com/in-conversation-with-zoran-kresovic-global-head-at-blueberry-markets/
Thursday: Marian Maczvalda on Poland as an important region. Will FX be free of MiFID rules soon?
Integral’s Marian Maczvalda, who spent nearly a decade at Bloomberg selling and supporting electronic trading solutions like FXGO, BSEF, EMSX, and TSOX, joined me in a morning conversation to dissect Central Europe’s brokerage sector. We both agreed that Poland stands out. Warsaw’s annual FX Cuffs conference attracts banks, brokers, and hedge funds not only within the local environment but from all over the world, including UK, France, North America, South Africa, and everywhere in between. Although why they host it on a Friday and Saturday remains a mystery.
It’s not just retail volume; Poland signals institutional appetite for sophisticated electronic trading beyond legacy retail models. Marian’s deep regional experience highlighted Warsaw as a hub where multi-product platforms thrive. Think unified risk across FX, derivatives, and more. For firms eyeing Europe, this is prime territory.
Talking of Europe – MiFID II compliance was a huge endeavor for many retail FX firms in the later part of last decade, with many having to spend a lot of resources making their infrastructure fit very comprehensive and revolutionary rules, and then use regulatory technology to report to responsible authorities. The rumors on the ground in major banking centers such as Luxembourg and Switzerland is that spot FX trading may well fall outside of the remit of MiFID, MiFID II only regulating FX derivatives.
If this is the case, given that a lot of brokers do offer spot FX, it could attract more brokers who didn’t want all the expense and restriction brought about by MiFID II, and can come back to Europe, and those who did to lament the cost of adherence to potentially irrelevant infrastructure directive. If able to offer the same products with the same ease of market approach, where would you rather be? France or Vanuatu?
Friday: Crypto in different forms, and how to manage it
I can’t help trying to dissect the figures presented by Australia’s AxiCorp this week.
I had a look at the data which shows the firm’s clients mixing derivatives and spot crypto within single platforms, and just the scale of it and the percentage of such trading underscores what I’ve said for a few years now. According to Finance Magnates, 46% of clients hold Crypto Across CFDs, Perpetuals and Spot Trading.
If you use this as a guide to dissect the figures presented by Australia’s AxiCorp this week, brokers, in order to make good use of their client bases and keep up with the way the industry is going may look closely at this metric.
If this mix of products are offered across fragmented platforms with siloed aggregators it must be a huge operational challenge to maintain. However if this is managed across a single comprehensive back-end trading engine which can cross-margin, with all products on one account, that offers huge operational cost savings both commercially and practically.
Offering spot crypto and perps is one thing, allowing traders and brokers to connect any front end with any product, to any market is a generational step forward that maintains a brokers’ moat against direct rivals and challengers from the cryptosphere.
