Bank of America Merrill Lynch has expanded its global algorithmic trading platform into Brazil. The move was made to meet increasing demand from international and local investors for more sophisticated trading products designed for Brazil's stock exchange, Bovespa.

The platform includes several of BofA Merrill Lynch's most popular algorithms, including implementation shortfall and VWAP.

"Interest and liquidity in Brazilian stocks have risen significantly this year and as a result our international investor clients are asking for more sophisticated trading tools to access this market," said Steve Schneider, head of Latin America equities at BofA Merrill Lynch.

"We are also seeing increasing demand from our local high-touch trading clients, many of whom are now looking forward to using these new trading tools in Brazil," he added.

The algorithmic trading platform provides a suite of fully anonymous, flexible algorithms with access to unique forms of liquidity, including 15 core equity and six core options algorithms. Clients can customise algorithms to conform to their goals and benchmark risk tolerance and use them to express views on alpha horizon, momentum versus mean reversion, and stock performance in absolute or relative terms.