John Crouch

Ideal partners with Barracuda FX

January 2022 in News Headlines

Ideal, the decision intelligence firm, is now offering its powerful 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.”