The Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange Limited recently celebrated surpassing TT$100million in trades on its online trading platform ‘TOP’ since its launch almost 1 year ago. Investors are now able to self-direct trades on the local stock market and for a lower fee than broker-directed trades.
Prior to the launch of TOP, all trades were broker-directed trades. Complications with the primary process along with other factors, created a perception among the investing and general public that all was not too right within the industry.
Getting to this point of celebration was not an easy task as a lot of ground work was needed to change the thinking entrenched within the brokerage industry itself.
It took years of standardizing broker interpretation of order types, stock exchange rule changes and motivation, in a self-regulatory environment, to turn industry thinking from ‘the client doesn’t understand the market’ to now having the clients trade for themselves via TOP.
The achievement of $100million in trades on Top is certainly a cause for celebration, aided in no small part to the work in laying the foundation upon which such a venture can now successfully build. With the stock market set to rebound with the opening up of the economy, along with expected increases in the number of persons signing up for TOP, the Stock Exchange should be celebrating the next $100million in trades in a lot shorter time than it did for the first.