Buy-side clients increasingly want real-time analytics and customizable FX execution tools, says Reza Gholizadech, vice president of automated trading strategies at JP Morgan, as volatile markets challenge traditional trading strategies.
Speaking at TradeTech FX in Miami, she says best execution now depends on greater visibility into how algorithms behave in different market conditions. JP Morgan’s Adaptive FX algorithm, launched in 2021, now accounts for 50% to 60% of the bank’s market-tracking algorithm flow, up from 20% at launch. In Q1 2026, JP Morgan introduced execution speeds tailored to each client’s six-month trading history to improve performance and reduce risk.
Interview
Terry Flanagan – Yesterday at the conference, you spoke on a panel about best execution. What were the key takeaways from that panel?
Reza Gholizadeh – Yeah, so on the panel, we discussed how in current market environments, achieving best execution goes beyond just using algo and automation. It is now about customization. It’s about transparency, it’s about more real-time analytics tools. A lot of clients are now asking for solutions that could dynamically adjust the execution in real time to their trading needs. And clients are aware of the fact that their trading behaviour could be very well different from a lot of clients. Some of the clients are asking for a more sophisticated pre-trade model, specifically analyzing their flow compared to what we are able to achieve with other clients. Overall, clients of both sides of the spectrum, both on the high-touch and low-touch, want more sophisticated tools. At the same time, more transparency as to how algo works, and algo is able to interact with markets in different market regimes.
Terry Flanagan – What are you hearing from JP Morgan’s buy-side clients here at Trade Tech FX in terms of what are their pain points around FX trading currently?
Reza Gholizadeh – Yeah. So as you can imagine, we have clients on both sides of spectrum. We have clients that want to have a fully high-touch and more control of their execution in real time. And also we have clients that are full systematic. They generally take a hands-off approach. Everything is model-driven. For clients that are very much high-touch. They want more real-time analytics. They want more transparency in real-time. They want to better understand the logic behind the algo, the way algo interacts with the market. Clients on the opposite side of the spectrum, they want more sophisticated tools, both pre-trade and post trade, in order to shape their execution based on our model, looking at different liquidity profiles throughout the day, different market dynamics, and use our data-driven approach the way we build the model to achieve best performance, minimize market impact and minimize time and risk at the same time.
Terry Flanagan – Adaptive was launched as JP Morgan’s flagship dynamic algorithm in 2021. What was the objective of this launch, and how has the algo evolved over the past five years?
Reza Gholizadeh – Yeah. Adaptive was launched in, as you mentioned, in 21. Initially, it was offered as a more dynamic solution for clients that want a real-time adjustment to the market dynamics. They wanted the algo to understand the real-time dynamics of the market and shape the execution around the way price action is in real time. Over the years, we have taken a data-driven approach towards building many customizations for clients that want a more sophisticated features within the algo, it now involves a lot of more real-time analytics. We have recently built an automated and systematic back testing framework that is able to provide more transparency to clients as to how their performance looks like in different market environments in compared to different alternative scenarios. Back when it was launched, that was around 20% of our market tracking algos flow. Today, as we speak, the flow that we’re seeing at Adaptive is closer to 50, 60% of all of our market tracking algos. That shows the improvements that our clients have been able to achieve in their performance by using our sophisticated tools at Adaptive, and that has shown in the growth in Adaptive flow over the years.
Terry Flanagan – Pulling it forward as of Q1 2026, Adaptive is offering tailored execution speeds, as you mentioned, based on each client’s unique trading history. How specifically will this help JP Morgan’s trading clients?
Reza Gholizadeh – Yes, absolutely so, as I mentioned in the previous question, the automated back testing framework that we built is aiming at providing transparency to clients as to how our models see their trading behaviour and the market dynamics around their trading behaviour compared to what we expect the impact of their trading to be. And that could very well be different for different clients. Clients, by choosing tailored solutions, can now fully outsource their choice of algo configuration to JP Morgan to tailor based on their recent six-month history and our models and the way we know the algo logic works in the back end. And by doing so, there can they can achieve best performance, minimize their market impact, and at the same time, minimize their time and risk in this more volatile market environment.
Terry Flanagan – Reza, thanks so much for being with us. Enjoy the rest of the conference.
