Slowly, quietly, with little fanfare or braggadocio, changes are taking place in the way foreign traders execute their orders in China's A-share market. At least, so the service recently introduced by Bank of America-Merrill Lynch would imply. And that's despite the fact that the bank does not yet possess a Chinese broking licence.
About a month ago, on May 14, the first trade was transacted on the Shanghai stock exchange using the US bank's direct market access DMA platform. It was the first ever instance of DMA trading in the A-share market and saw one of BoA-Merrill's high frequency clients buy 300,000 shares of the China 50 ETF, which is managed by China...