The pace of trading has changed and technology decides who keeps up

South Africa’s equity market has long supported a high standard of trading activity, with infrastructure that global participants recognise and trust. That has made it easier for different types of capital to enter over time, and the mix of participants now reflects that. Global tier-one banks are deploying capital into the country with greater consistency, alongside sophisticated asset managers and high-frequency trading firms whose models rely on ultra-low latency and highly optimised execution. Their participation comes with established operating models, where trading systems, data, and execution are closely integrated and calibrated to very tight performance thresholds. What the market is seeing today is that orders are increasingly handled closer to the point of decision, with clients getting access directly through algorithms, vendor tools, or execution capabilities provided by the bank, because they want the ability to control how their trades are executed. It is not that different to what happened in banking more broadly, where there was a time when customers had to go into a branch and speak to someone at a desk for everything from home loans to vehicle finance, and that now sits in an app. The trading environment has been moving in a similar direction, at least over two decades. Clients are also showing interest in different types of trade activity, with some requiring low-latency access and placing value on execution speed at a very granular level, while others focus on managing large orders over time using algorithms to interact with liquidity as it develops through the trading day. And this activity often extends beyond a single market, with clients seeking access across multiple jurisdictions through a single point of entry, typically facilitated through global counterparties that allow local platforms to connect into a broader set of markets without direct presence, which means all of these different ways of interaction sit within the same trading env