Summer Playlist 2026 Episode 2 | Joe Raia, Thomas McMahon, & Russell Robertson from the Abaxx Team

And you mentioned the indexation and getting the price into the contract.

How important is that? And what does it take to get a price adopted into the consumer or producer contracts?

I think there are two things now.

It depends on what you're trying to achieve.

So if you have a concept where you want to build a very physical contract, future contract that's very, very physical, you want that asset to move from one place to another, then ultimately the indexation becomes quite relevant.

So the idea being that if I'm a producer of something and I sell it to someone else, the price that I sell from me to them, we want that to be a benchmark.

Because that allows my buyer to be able to hedge their risk against the thing that they've ultimately bought.

It's not so much designed for the seller because they have that control of how they want to do that.

But it also allows them to build market share because people have an expectation of what that thing costs.

Whereas you can look at it in another way, like cash settled futures.

You don't really need that to be in a contract, not really, but it has to just be something that's relevant to the marketplace.

So the idea that you can just list a futures contract just because you like it doesn't really work.

There has to be a rational reason, whether it's an arbitrage against something else or whether it's related to an asset or commodity or doesn't have to be a commodity.

It could be an interest rate or a foreign exchange or anything.

There has to be a reason why someone wants to trade

that data.

And now you're all working at ABEX, launching new markets.

When you think about all the experience that you're drawing upon, what's the challenge? What's the playbook that you're operating from today to build liquidity in new markets?

Yeah, I mean, for me, the ultimate goal is always to bring in that commercial activity, right? So some of the big products that we know today, Brent and WTI, I'll mention over and again just because it's on top of my head, but people don't always understand that a lot of consumers or traders or hedgers, however you want to describe them, they use those products because they have liquidity, not necessarily because they're the right thing to manage at risk.

So it's up to us to promote things that are actually mathematically, quantitatively correct for their portfolio hedging.

Now for us to do that, we can create the product.

We can give them the solution.

You can prove the quantitative side of this is a better way to manage your risk.

However, a lot of traders are very comfortable to sit and do things the way they've done for the last 10 years, right? So we have to create liquidity from financial players to give these people the opportunity to trade in the market.

They need a counterparty.

And you mentioned the indexation and getting the price into the contract.

How important is that? And what does it take to get a price adopted into the consumer or producer contracts?

I think there are two things now.

It depends on what you're trying to achieve.

So if you have a concept where you want to build a very physical contract, future contract that's very, very physical, you want that asset to move from one place to another, then ultimately the indexation becomes quite relevant.

So the idea being that if I'm a producer of something and I sell it to someone else, the price that I sell from me to them, we want that to be a benchmark.

Because that allows my buyer to be able to hedge their risk against the thing that they've ultimately bought.

It's not so much designed for the seller because they have that control of how they want to do that.

But it also allows them to build market share because people have an expectation of what that thing costs.

Whereas you can look at it in another way, like cash settled futures.

You don't really need that to be in a contract, not really, but it has to just be something that's relevant to the marketplace.

So the idea that you can just list a futures contract just because you like it doesn't really work.

There has to be a rational reason, whether it's an arbitrage against something else or whether it's related to an asset or commodity or doesn't have to be a commodity.

It could be an interest rate or a foreign exchange or anything.

There has to be a reason why someone wants to trade

that data.

And now you're all working at ABEX, launching new markets.

When you think about all the experience that you're drawing upon, what's the challenge? What's the playbook that you're operating from today to build liquidity in new markets?

Yeah, I mean, for me, the ultimate goal is always to bring in that commercial activity, right? So some of the big products that we know today, Brent and WTI, I'll mention over and again just because it's on top of my head, but people don't always understand that a lot of consumers or traders or hedgers, however you want to describe them, they use those products because they have liquidity, not necessarily because they're the right thing to manage at risk.

So it's up to us to promote things that are actually mathematically, quantitatively correct for their portfolio hedging.

Now for us to do that, we can create the product.

We can give them the solution.

You can prove the quantitative side of this is a better way to manage your risk.

However, a lot of traders are very comfortable to sit and do things the way they've done for the last 10 years, right? So we have to create liquidity from financial players to give these people the opportunity to trade in the market.

They need a counterparty.