SGX, Phillip Futures Join Forces to Train New Professional Traders

Singapore Exchange (SGX) and futures broker Phillip Futures announced Thursday that they are setting up a new Professional Traders Development Centre to train and grow the talent pool of professional traders.

The new centre will accept up to 50 new traders per quarter on its training and mentorship programme which will start in May 2012. SGX said the initiative underscores the rising interest in trading of derivatives contracts which saw a record trading volume of 72 million contracts in 2011, 18 per cent higher than in 2010.

The core offering at this centre is a derivatives trading course with SGX Academy trainers providing mentorship during actual trading. This collaboration is expected to train more than 200 traders a year.

“The Professional Traders Development Centre is an integrated training platform providing a rigorous trading and mentorship programme which supports exchange of trading ideas and strategies in a ‘live’ trading environment. This integrated training approach will build talents and capabilities for the derivatives trading community and lead to a more exciting derivatives trading landscape going forward,” said Chew Sutat, SGX Executive Vice President who oversees the SGX Academy.

Meanwhile, SGX also launched Thursday its inaugural Securities Market Quality Report which provides information on trading activity, liquidity, volatility and trading costs on the SGX securities market in 2011.

The report aims to provide a quantitative overview of trading activity and market dynamics to enable investors to better evaluate “market quality” and highlight trading opportunities available on SGX.

It is prepared by SGX in conjunction with the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre in Australia, and is intended to be a half-yearly report covering 12-month periods ending June and December going forward.

“We hope market participants, especially institutional players, will find this report useful in helping them with their trading decisions on SGX, the world’s most internationalized securities market. We will continue to develop our market through product, microstructure and infrastructure enhancements for the benefit of all participants,” said Nels Friets, Head of Securities at SGX.