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Over the last few years, most market participants have focused on incremental modernization. Faster execution here. Better analytics there. A new venue, a new tool, a new workflow layered onto what already exists. 

That approach worked when the change was gradual. 

What’s becoming clear now is that the environment markets are operating has shifted more fundamentally. Trading is becoming more continuous and more global. Liquidity is fragmenting across venues, time horizons, and strategies. Volumes are rising, but so is complexity. And expectations around speed, data quality, and automation are no longer optional add-ons – they’re assumed. 

By 2026, the question for many firms won’t be what to modernize next, but whether their existing infrastructure can still absorb the friction it’s being asked to carry. 

Execution Is No Longer a Single Metric Problem 

One of the quiet shifts underway is how execution quality is being evaluated. 

Historically, execution decisions leaned heavily on short-term indicators – immediate mark outs, fill rates, hit rates. Those metrics still matter, but they no longer tell the full story. As strategies become more nuanced and market conditions more dynamic, firms are starting to evaluate execution across broader horizons. 

Impact is being measured over longer intervals. Performance is being assessed at the parent order level, not just the child fill. Venue selection is becoming conditional – dependent on urgency, market state, and strategic intent rather than static routing logic. 

This reflects a deeper truth: liquidity engagement is no longer uniform. Traders want the ability to interact with different pools of liquidity on different terms, with controls that adapt to strategy rather than constrain it. 

Fragmentation Is Increasing – But So Is Scrutiny 

At the same time, the market structure itself is becoming more fragmented. 

New trading venues, alternative execution models, and differentiated liquidity mechanisms continue to emerge. Retail participation remains elevated. Overnight and extended-hours trading is gaining traction, even if operational and structural questions remain unresolved. 

What’s changed is how rigorously firms are evaluating where and how they trade. 

Participants are becoming more granular in how they assess venues – not just by headline liquidity or fees, but by how specific market structures align with specific strategies, time windows, and cost sensitivities. Flexibility is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a requirement. 

This heightened scrutiny is also exposing pressure points. Rising technology costs, tighter economics, and legacy outsourcing models are forcing difficult conversations, particularly for operators built on thin margins or rigid architectures. 

By 2026, adaptability – both technical and operational – will increasingly separate sustainable models from those that quietly exit the market. 

Data Is Moving from Product to Infrastructure 

Another structural shift is unfolding around market data. 

Institutions are becoming far less tolerant of opaque pricing, fragmented coverage, and delayed access. What once felt like a cost of doing business is now being questioned as a structural inefficiency. 

The expectation is shifting toward real-time, globally consistent, transparently priced data that can plug directly into trading, analytics, and risk workflows. This isn’t just about cost control – it’s about decision quality. In fast-moving markets, delayed or incomplete data compounds risk in ways that tools alone can’t mitigate. 

As digitization deepens and on-chain and off-chain systems begin to converge, data is increasingly viewed as foundational infrastructure rather than a premium product. Firms that can’t access or operationalize high-quality data efficiently will find themselves at a disadvantage, regardless of how sophisticated their strategies appear on paper. 

Automation Is No Longer About Efficiency Alone 

Across asset classes, rising volumes are exposing the limits of manual and voice-driven workflows. 

This is especially visible in areas where electronic adoption has lagged despite significant growth in activity. What once felt manageable becomes fragile under scale: inconsistent execution, limited transparency, operational bottlenecks, and delayed risk visibility. 

The response is no longer incremental automation. Institutions are rethinking workflows end-to-end – embedding automation, standardization, and data capture into the core of how markets operate. 

By 2026, electronic and automated execution won’t be adopted just to reduce costs. It will be adopted because it becomes fundamental to resilience, scalability, and competitiveness in markets where velocity and volume continue to rise. 

What This Means Heading Into 2026 

Taken together, these shifts point to a common theme: markets are becoming less forgiving of friction. 

Fragmented systems, manual handoffs, and siloed data don’t just slow things down – they distort decisions, increase risk, and limit strategic flexibility. For a long time, firms absorbed that friction because they could. Competitive pressure was manageable, and the cost of change felt higher than the cost of inefficiency. 

That balance is tipping. 

By 2026, the firms that struggle won’t necessarily be the ones lacking innovation. They’ll be the ones still relying on infrastructure designed for a slower, simpler, more segmented market environment.