STA Expands to Latin America

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Security Traders Association is heading into Latin America.

The move comes through the Security Traders Association of Florida, which is giving birth to a chapter that will recruit members from Colombia, Peru, Chile, Brazil and Mexico. 

The effort is being coordinated by Victor Hugo Rodriguez, who is taking on the role of the first president of the Latin American chapter.

He will recruit membership recruitment chiefs in each of the five countries, who will be named later. The effort to create the chapter began in February, he said.

The chapter will act initially as an extension of the Florida association. He and the chapter will operate out of Miami, initially. But Rodriguez said the chapter will operate offices in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo and Mexico City.

Developing affiliates in Latin America will be "a long process,” said Jim Toes, the president and chief executive of the Security Traders Association.

The Miami base, he said, however, will allow U.S.-based brokers to interact with their counterparts in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America, to learn how their markets work. And to establish relationships, for when they need trades handled in those countries. And vice versa.

"It’s a baby step,” Toes said. "But we think it is a meaningful one.""

The STA has 800 members in three affiliates in Canada: Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. The association has 4,100 members, in all its affiliates, in the United States, Toes said.

Rodriguez is a former trader who fled to the United States after a kidnapping 14 years ago in his native Venezuela.

Rodriguez currently is chief executive and president of LatAm Alternatives, a firm that distributes U.S. hedge funds to investors in Latin America. His firm has seven salespeople in Latin America.

The Brazilian exchange, BM&FBOVESPA, is now the fourth largest in the Americas, according to the World Federation of Exchanges. The Mexican exchange grew 5.2% last year and the Colombian exchange grew 3.7%, while nearly all other exchanges in the Americas shrank in 2011, according to the WFE.