As we hit the ground running this year with some of our most awaited offerings, I wanted to provide you–our clients, partners, and friends–this update on our progress and our plans.

‍Without a doubt, 2024 was our most successful year yet.

• Our transaction volume hit $893 billion across asset classes–87% growth vs. the previous year-end. This followed solid growth of 115% in 2023 and 100% in 2022. 2024’s growth was strong across the board with our US equity volume up 80% and global futures volume up 110%.

• 2024 was our first year in the black, representing a crucial turning point for us. The progress we've made is clear in our numbers, and it underscores the strategic decisions and investments we’ve made. 

• Our team has grown to 55 members spread across Stamford, San Francisco, London, Singapore, Bengaluru, Kochi and Yerevan.

From this stronghold, we made major strides in 2024 and our team is positioned for explosive growth in 2025. 

We began 2024 with the launch of IS Zero, a product that took two years to develop and is specifically designed for clients using VWAP to target the IS benchmark. In one of our longest running A/B tests including more than 140,000 parent orders, IS Zero beat VWAP–reducing IS by 30%. As a result, it quickly became the most heavily used algorithm on our platform. 

While IS Zero was designed to reduce the transaction costs of somewhat smaller orders (those less than 5% of average daily volume), many asset managers are struggling to reduce the trading costs of large orders with little available liquidity. For these orders, costs can be astronomically high, and current solutions tend to be based on anecdotes and narratives rather than empirical research. Using what we know best–our market structure expertise and empirical research–we are heavily invested in solving this problem and introduced a brand new liquidity-seeking algorithm with hyper-optimized access to ATSs via conditional orders and segmentation. 

This algorithm has already become a game-changer for clients and saved one asset manager $21 million in transaction costs last year. We also published one of the first empirical research papers on conditional orders to share our findings with clients, and we expect to publish more on this topic this year. 

In addition, we’ve tackled some of our customers’ biggest workflow challenges this year with the launches of order aggregation methodology that seamlessly aggregates multiple parent orders on the same stock or futures contract, our new Venue Analysis Report for better assessment of fill quality, automation of algorithm assignment according to each order’s characteristics, and more. And we’ve doubled the size of our AMS team to continue addressing the workflow issues our clients face every day. 

In 2025, we're expanding our high-performance trading platform–from end to end–with new products, new markets, and new services.

We founded BestEx Research to significantly upgrade execution algorithms and transaction cost analysis across markets. And I can say with strong conviction that over the last 7 years, we have come a long way toward delivering on this mission. In 2025, we will continue to bring our vision to life by driving forward in three areas: 

We will continue to improve performance in our existing suite of execution algorithms. 

• XOR (the best ever SOR): A truly novel way to access liquidity offering ultimate optionality for targeting liquidity, tailored to the preferences of our customers and the needs of their flow
• IS Zero for futures: Reducing IS performance for low-urgency orders–with completely customized implementation tailored to the unique market structure of futures
• A new alpha model will further improve IS performance for equities and futures

We will make transaction cost analysis even more actionable for our customers. 

• Our first pre-trade analytics product, including a market impact model: A robust market impact model available via Rest API and in AMS along with additional analytics (currently in beta)
• An AI algo wheel that balances–and rebalances–algo usage according to performance

‍We will make our high-performance execution algorithms more accessible, and in more markets. 

• Europe and APAC equities: We’re almost there! Our execution algorithms will soon trade across 19 markets–a natural expansion of our platform, tailored to each unique market structure
• 24x5 trading for futures: We’re deploying significant resources to extend our futures algorithms to be available 24x5 so that our clients can place orders at any time, across the globe, with no restart

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As always, we’ll continue to share the market structure insights and empirical analysis behind our design as we step forward together in 2025. 

We care deeply about the quality of your execution, and we’re thrilled to be on this journey with you. 

In partnership,

Hitesh Mittal