Ideal Partners with Barracuda FX for Trading Analytics and Supervisory Risk Management

January 12, 2022 – Decision intelligence firm Ideal is now offering its performance analytics and supervisory risk management solutions to clients trading within ION-owned Barracuda FX’s secure environment. The partnership between Ideal and Barracuda FX provides clients with turnkey access to industry-leading analytics and actionable insights.

The Ideal Flow solution brings an unprecedented level of insight to FX trading. Ideal Flow offers independent TCA reporting, client and counterparty analysis, liquidity management, and more in one unified interface. In addition to best execution reporting, Ideal Flow provides powerful visualizations and analysis of counterparty behavior—both over time and by the millisecond—flagging potential issues to investigate and informing client tiering and flow decisions.

The Ideal Control solution streamlines trade supervision for first-line risk management teams, helping to foster more ethical trading behavior. Particularly relevant for senior managers complying with SMCR, Ideal Control provides independent validation and evidence of ethical decision-making, greatly mitigating operational, reputational, and regulatory risks. Ideal Control operationalizes trading best practices and principles-based regulation as quantifiable checks, curated alerts, and clear action steps—automating workflows and building a defensible audit trail over time.

“The highly specialized analytics powering Ideal solutions reflect our team’s firsthand experience leading trading desks and quant groups for over two decades in-house, within FX, fixed income, and other asset classes,” said Ideal CEO John Crouch. “Our in-depth understanding of FX-specific dynamics and workflows translates to user-friendly interfaces with intelligent curation built-in.”

Crouch continued, “Ideal Flow and Ideal Control analyze the same pool of FX trading data through two different lenses, illuminating how traders can optimize their performance and helping supervisory risk managers adhere to the FX Global Code and MiFID MAR code of conduct principles. We’re excited to bring these decision intelligence solutions to Barracuda FX clients.”

Barracuda FX Chief Technology Officer Joshua Walsky added, “Barracuda FX has a long history of offering market-leading products across the front office for banks, brokers, and other financial institutions trading in FX. Our flagship OMS and solutions for trading, execution, pricing, and distribution provide our clients with modular, end-to-end solutions for their FX trading needs. We are pleased to offer the complementary capabilities of Ideal solutions within our secure environment. Barracuda FX clients can get up and running with Ideal Flow and Ideal Control almost instantly.”

The combined capabilities of Barracuda FX and Ideal help firms trading in FX optimize their performance.