UBS ATS won Best Equities Trading Platform at the 2021 Markets Choice Awards.

Markets Media caught up with Seth Slomiak, Head of UBS ATS at UBS, to learn more.

What is your reaction to UBS ATS winning the Best Equities Trading Platform award? 

We are honored to receive the Markets Media Best Equities Trading Platform award for 2021. UBS ATS has been the leading ATS by transaction volume since August 2015* and continues to strive to provide quality liquidity to our entire client base. We are happy to see our dedicated efforts translate into this award, and we also send a big thank you to Markets Media and the trading community for recognizing the achievements of the UBS ATS.

There has been high trading volume and volatility, and high retail activity, over the past year amid the pandemic. What challenges (and/or opportunities) has this presented for UBS ATS?

The market has seen significant increases in volume and volatility over the past year, and the UBS ATS has worked hard to demonstrate to the street that we are the premier off-exchange trading venue for accessing liquidity. Through the pandemic, the UBS ATS processed a record number of orders and traded record volumes, and, in a milestone event on March 18, 2020, the UBS ATS executed over one billion shares (double counted)**.

What are current initiatives to improve UBS ATS and the UBS ATS customer experience?

As has been the case for more than a decade, we will continue to invest in the UBS ATS platform. This will enable us to continue to build new functionality along with scaling capacity, integrity, resiliency, availability, and security so we can support client trading objectives, no matter what market conditions exist.

What does the future hold for UBS ATS?

UBS ATS is constantly assessing market conditions and client needs while continuing to focus on performance and stability. We are excited for the future of the platform and look forward to providing unique quality liquidity to our clients for many years to come.

What is UBS ATS?

UBS ATS provides the opportunity to interact with a broad range of clients and market participants, including institutional, retail, DMA, UBS trading desks, as well as order flow from broker-dealers, market makers and active traders (sometimes referred to as “HFT”), subject to certain crossing restrictions.

UBS PIN in the US (“UBS PIN (US)”) is a differentiated segment of liquidity operated within the UBS ATS. UBS PIN (US) facilitates interaction between any combination of UBS Retail Orders, UBS institutional algorithmic order flow, and UBS Principal Orders.

*UBS ATS ranked #1 by executed transaction volume since August 2015. See ATS Transparency Data Quarterly Statistics, FINRA, accessible at http://www.finra.org/industry/otc/ats-transparency-data-quarterly-statistics.

**UBS Internal Data