Flow Traders Q1 income surges on pandemic-led market volatility

Flow Traders

21/04/2020 07:01

AMSTERDAM, April 21 (Reuters) - Amsterdam-based Flow Traders
 FLOW.AS  said on Tuesday it thrived in the first quarter, aided
by the coronavirus-induced market volatility, as its trading
income surged and profit rose more than 10 times from last year.
    Pretax profit for the high-frequency trading firm came in at
320.1 million euros ($346.7 million), compared with 23.2 million
euros in the first quarter of 2019, and net trading income
jumped to 495 million euros from 63.1 million euros.
    High-frequency traders, which typically deploy sophisticated
algorithms and powerful computers to move in and out of markets
at lightning speeds, tend to do well when markets are volatile.
    Flow Traders said it had activated backup trading plans
during the pandemic, with a majority of employees working from
home, and split teams working at back locations in Amsterdam,
New York and Hong Kong.
    "Given the market environment, we saw substantially
increased volumes and heightened risk, as well as corresponding
widening of spreads," Chief Trading Officer Folkert Joling said
in a statement. 
    "From a trading systems' perspective, no outages or downtime
were experienced during the intense period in mid-March," Joling
said, adding that the results also reflected the company's new
focus and investments in the U.S. markets and fixed income
trading.
        
    ($1 = 0.9234 euros)

 (Reporting by Toby Sterling, Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
 ((toby.sterling@thomsonreuters.com; +31 20 504 5002;))