Trading volumes are lower across most financial markets, and market structures are more complex. The combination has made sourcing liquidity especially challenging for the buy side, at a time when protecting return in an alpha-scarce market is critical.

Dmitry Bulkin spends his days working on this challenge as director and head of liquidity strategy for equity trading at Credit Suisse, a leading Wall Street firm.

Bulkin joined Credit Suisse’s Advanced Execution Services group in 2003 from Kiodex, an energy-derivatives firm, where he managed the firm’s product development. Prior to Kiodex, Bulkin was at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he worked on a system to electronically trade government bonds. Mr. Bulkin earned a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Minnesota.

Markets Media interviewed Bulkin via telephone on March 19.

Markets Media: Briefly discuss your role/function as head of liquidity strategy.

Dmitry Bulkin:  I’ve been with Credit Suisse for ten years, mostly working on algorithmic development. Recently I took a new role as the head of liquidity strategy for the equities trading department. In this role, I am responsible for managing relationships with the firm’s liquidity providers and partners, such as exchanges, alternative trading systems and other broker-dealers. I’m also deeply involved in managing our two alternative trading systems, Light Pool and Crossfinder, and I participate in forming our market-structure policies — that is, anything and everything that has to do with market structure.

MM: How would you characterize institutional markets currently in terms of liquidity, and how has that changed over the past few years?

DB: In general, institutional investors are finding that their execution costs are very low by historical standards, and spreads are tighter. But of course there are some challenges, especially moving low-cap and less liquid names, and a lot of people are concerned about the general complexity of the markets and equity market structure.

MM: What are the main challenges for the buy side in sourcing liquidity?

SEE THE FULL Q&A IN THE UPCOMING MARCH-APRIL ISSUE OF MARKETS MEDIA MAGAZINE