PandaTS THOMAS KAREKLAS Vice President of Sales
Q It has been a turbulent couple of years both in markets and in the wider world. How do you see the prospects of the online trading industry going forward, specifically for CFD brokers? It certainly has been turbulent, to say the least. I think our industry tends to benefit when market volatility is up. Of course, people were stuck at home, they had money to spend, this benefited online businesses across the board. How markets continue to fare now that the stimulus is being pulled back and the postlockdown growth isn’t as easy to sustain, is another story. Specifically for our industry, though, things are indeed looking up, both from the perspective of brokers and technology providers such as ourselves. We’re seeing new markets continuing to develop. Dubai is
GAME CHANGERS Issue #40
a very exciting regulated jurisdiction, there’s a great deal of development going on over there. South Africa too, is quickly growing into a regional FX hub, and of course there’s tremendous potential for growth in Latin America. That’s probably the least developed of the three currently but the potential is there and the demographics are favourable. Q How do you view the increased competition from other online trading venues from the perspective of CFD brokers? I think it’s all part of that democratisation of trading that our industry has been pushing for the past couple of decades. I don’t really view it as competition because when you talk about rival trading venues you’re talking about crypto exchanges, zero commission stock brokers and so on. These are asset specific venues that all experience their own boom bust cycles.
