Trading Newsflashes: Currenex Applies for Patent on Liquidity Matching Engine

NYFIX Appoints CTO

NYFIX hired Donald Henderson as chief technology officer. Henderson will be responsible for continuing to enhance the firm's technical infrastructure, including its data center, network and distributed applications technologies, says today's announcement.

Henderson brings nearly 20 years of experience including consulting in the financial services and information technology sectors. He spent 11 years at Bear Stearns & Co. rising to the position of co-chief technology officer and head of the infrastructure technology-planning group. During his tenure at Bear Stearns, he headed the design and migration planning of the information technology infrastructure for the firm's new corporate headquarters at 383 Madison Avenue.

After leaving Bear Stearns and prior to joining NYFIX, Henderson spent two years as head of the consulting planning practice and business development for Rip Tyde Partners, an information technology consultant. Prior to joining Bear Stearns, he also worked for five years at McKinsey and Company in its infrastructure technology group.

"Don's superb technology and operations background within the financial service sector makes him a perfect fit for NYFIX," stated Robert Gasser, CEO of NYFIX in the release. In a statement, Gasser indicated that NYFIX's biggest challenge is extracting more value from investments in infrastructure, while keeping up with the increasing pace of change in the global securities industry. "Don's technological vision and leadership will play a critical role in meeting this challenge," stated Gasser in the release.

Currenex Applies for Patent on Liquidity Matching Engine

Currenex has applied for a patent on a proprietary system, CX OneOrder, which finds matches across multiple liquidity pools. The patent is entitled "System and Method for Providing One-Order Methodology in Over-the-Counter Markets." The patent was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office on April 25, 2006, according to Currenex, a leading technology supplier of foreign exchange spot, forward and swaps trading solutions.

The proprietary system enhances execution performance by reducing or eliminating execution slippage in an aggregated liquidity pool.

According to Currenex, the patent-pending technology, which has been integrated into its existing trading services, allows orders to exist simultaneously in multiple liquidity pools. Transactions average 12 milliseconds delivering less slippage on models and more efficiency for traders, according to the company. The technology is built on the concept that orders route in an asymmetric relationship across all liquidity. Traditional routing technologies leave orders "in limbo" when real time prices arrive in a separate liquidity pool and the order must be cancelled, then resubmitted, the company says. CX OneOrder integrates fragmented markets so that "hunting" is rarely necessary and orders exist and execute across multiple liquidity pools, says the release.

Both buy and sell side benefit because more orders can be filled at a faster rate, said the company. By using CX OneOrder, a trader's resting limit orders participate in multiple liquidity pools, increasing the likelihood of a match.

According to the release, Currenex has several patents to deliver optimal execution in the fastest markets. Currenex connects more than 60 global banks to an electronic trading network, making it one of the deepest liquidity pools in forex, says the release.

Major Banks Sign On to Reuters for FX Trading

Reuters reports that Deutsche Bank, Dexia, HSBC and Societe Generale are the latest banks to go live on Reuters Trading for Foreign Exchange (RTFX). The system allows banks and their customers to trade foreign exchange from their Reuters desktops. In addition, Citigroup is the newest bank to commit to the service and plans to go live in Q3. Reuters says the addition of these major FX banks adds weight to the dealer-to-customer foreign exchange trading service.

Seamus Sullivan, global head of sales for RTFX at Reuters stated in the release, "With Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Societe Generale and Dexia on the service, RTFX now has the liquidity and support from some of the biggest names in FX. Our focus is to continue to grow the liquidity and number of transactions on RTFX to ensure that we add value and make this a leading foreign exchange transaction service." RTFX has the support of 21 price makers and over 500 price takers from around the world.

In a statement in the release, Alan Clarke, global head of e-FX at HSBC, commented, "Connecting HSBC's pricing engine to RTFX allows us to trade with an increasing number of client relationships. With our global currency coverage it is now possible to trade in 84 supported currencies with HSBC on RTFX."

ITG Solutions Group Taps Roberts as European Head of Macgregor

ITG Solutions Group, a subsidiary of Investment Technology Group (ITG), has named Mike Roberts as head of its European operations for the Macgregor product line. Roberts joins from SunGard where he spent 14 years across both Europe and Asia. His most recent position was managing director of SunGard Trading Systems in London.

Roberts will develop the Macgregor business across Europe and build up the team in London, according to the release. "I believe the buy side is entering a new phase of dynamic innovation, technology investment and change. The Macgregor products and services, complemented by the full suite of ITG products, is uniquely placed to respond to and capitalize on these changes," Roberts stated in the release.

Macgregor is a leading provider of trade order management technology and is part of ITG Solutions Network, a broker-neutral, wholly owned subsidiary of ITG, the technology based equity-trading services group. ITG Solutions Network offers a range of solutions spanning portfolio management, pre-trade analytics, order management and post-trade analysis to help clients improve their investment process.

Roberts will report directly to Stephen Alepa, ITG managing director and global head of sales and services at ITG Solutions Network.

Apama Adds Dashboard for Real-time Visualization

The Progress Apama Event Stream Processing platform is introducing a Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) dashboard design and execution environment. The dashboard provides the event stream processing monitoring and analysis capabilities with real-time visualization.

In the complex event-processing field, Apama enables the real-time monitoring and analysis of event streams from such sources as external stock market feeds and internal transaction data traffic. The Dashboard Studio product, which is already in use at a number of client sites, gives the user the ability to visualize, in real time, all relevant activity, with automatic alerts when complex conditions or exceptions are detected.

"The tools give traders the ability to monitor complex strategies in an intuitive manner," stated Dr. John Bates, VP Apama Products, Progress Software, in the release. "For example, traders in financial services firms are using Apama to execute and monitor ever-more complex trading strategies. "The sophistication of these strategies, coupled with increased volume, demands real-time visibility to help traders understand and respond to market conditions. Apama Dashboard Studio provides just that," he added in the release.

The Dashboard Studio product includes a complete design and deployment environment with a wide range of visual objects, including meters, scales, tables, grids, bar and pie charts, along with trend and XY charts—all of which change dynamically as events occur in real time.