Most big foreign exchange houses can offer online pricing for forex options, but few can handle electronic execution. Of those that can, Goldman Sachs and UBS offer by far the best platforms.
Goldman Sachs wins this award this year because although its clients execute a small proportion of their forex options online, the bank combines execution capabilities on the same platform with cutting-edge analytics tools. It therefore provides the most comprehensive platform of its kind.
Clients can trade vanilla options on the multiproduct WebET platform through executable streaming rates. For more complex structures, though, they can use Quote Online. That tool can price options of up to 20 legs – much more than the offerings from other banks. Clients and Goldman Sachs staff can send pricing sheets to each other electronically to discuss and shape complex transactions. And Quote Online is a smart tool – it can solve fields on multi-legged transactions to create the precise price and structure that the client is looking for. Where these individually priced structures break down into basic individual options, it is possible to execute the deal by sending the structure through to WebET, but generally the bank’s sales staff execute them manually on the price or prices generated by the Quote Online tool.