Exclusive: Interview with CEO Mark Foulger on the Launch of Ellipse Trading

Industry veteran Mark Foulger has left Tokkyo FX to launch his own brokerage firm, Ellipse Trading (ellipse-trading.com). Foulger was the Head of Sales at the market maker, Tokkyo FX since 2019.

Foulger has great experience in the industry, almost 20 years. In 2003, Foulger was responsible for a diverse set of tasks within defined retirement accounts which invested in over 55 mutual funds (Unit Trusts) at ING Financial Group.

He continued his sales position in multiple firms such as CMC Markets, GFT UK and London Capital Group. Prior to Tokkyo FX, in 2013, Mark was the Vice President of Sales at Integral Development Cooperation (EMEA), then the Director of Sales (EMEA) at TradeFair.

Ellipse Trading is new a London-based market maker for institutional clients and ecns.

Exclusive Interview with CEO Mark Foulger

We reached out to Mark, the CEO and Founder of Ellipse Trading, for some exclusive insights into his new venture.

What will Ellipse offer to traders?

We aren’t really a broker, i.e. we don’t deal with retail clients. We act as a market maker for institutional clients and ecns. We hold risk and create our own prices and skew to add value.

With the participants we face, we offer the ability to create our own price, and then skew out of our risk bucket thus creating better pricing with firm fills. We also prop trade based on our own algos.

Is the prime focus on FX and cryptocurrencies?

That’s correct. On yield farming and arbing on the crypto side.

What is the roadmap for Ellipse in the years to come?

On the FX side, looking to expand product breadth. [The] honest Expansion on the crypto side is going to be huge. There’s a ton of massive opportunities that you don’t get simply trading FX. From de-fi yield farming to looking for tokens that are mispriced. I think the space will rapidly change in the upcoming years. I want to be able to adapt quickly to the changing environment.

Are there any particular regions or client segments you plan on targeting and what is the reasoning behind this?

no - not particularly, to be honest. And, we are limited to institutional players, so segment is limited to banks - funds - basically those who access credit through a pb. [We are] more focused on product - especially crypto.

What are your thoughts on the upcoming regulations in the crypto industry?

[I] fully believe space needs to be regulated, but not at the expense of innovation. There have been some good bills proposed recently. I believe the ethos of "be your own bank" needs to be maintained with general regulatory oversight from scams, rug-pulls etc.

Will Ellipse offer crypto staking and if yes, please tell us more about it and the prop trading in Ellipse.

Staking - we will engage in it (already do) with our own capital - not going to be offering it.

Prop trading - on fx - we have an algo called fingerprint that looks for alpha over a 4-6 hour time window, trading 20-30 positions at any one time.[We are] looking at developing further strategies with our quants.

on crypto - [we are] currently looking at utilising "risk-free" strategies to accumulate coins we believe have value along with some basic trading. We are generally running long spot positions and hedging with perps - accumulating desired tokens by doing so but also simply buying coins we think will "go to the moon" :).

Thank you for the time you have dedicated to this interview Mark.