Elk Capital Markets, a New York-based high-frequency trading firm, strengthened its team by appointing industry veteran Steve Reich as the Chief Operating Officer. Although he joined the role last year, the announcement was made public just yesterday (Thursday).

New COO at Elk Capital Markets

“I started my career as a trader, and it’s tremendously exciting for me to leverage both trading and tech-building skills to foster Elk's continued growth in terms of expertise, creative, cutting-edge strategies, market presence, and ultimately individual and team performance and profitability,” Reich wrote in a LinkedIn post.

A Forex Industry Veteran

Reich is an industry veteran with about 35 years of professional experience in the trading sector and has worked for many well-known financial services companies. He joined Elk Capital Markets from Hudson River Trading, where he was a part of the Digital Asset team between January 2022 and May 2023.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Reich started his career at Credit Suisse (now a part of UBS) as an FX trader in 1988 and separated from the firm as the VP Senior Dealer after seven years. Later, he joined HSBC as the Chief Dealer for Foreign Exchange, working there for a couple of years. Then, he became a Managing Director at Barclays Capital, a role he held for three years.

He continued his foray into the forex industry by becoming the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Hotspot FX, now known as Cboe FX, and is a part of Cboe Global Markets. Following his tenure at Hotspot FX, he headed FX Bridge as the CEO for a couple of years.

He previously served as the Head of FX and Commodities at New York-based GTS, holding the position from September 2013 and November 2019. He was also the Chief Revenue Officer for Pivot Technologies at the CME Group.

“I’d like to thank the folks who worked with me at Hudson River Trading in building out a crypto trading business, and I’m excited to leverage that network as I move forward with Elk Capital,” Reich added.