Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley''s Smart Order Routing Technology (SORT) incorporates an aggressive take functionality, which synchronises liquidity capture across market venues to increase certainty of fills and minimise latency disadvantages. It also offers an inter-listed SORT mechanism which aims to achieve best execution by routing orders for fungible inter-listed securities to either a US or Canadian market centre based on prevailing prices and liquidity.
The broker also offers NightVision, a dark aggregation tool and NightOwl, which has lit and dark functionality.

Access and algorithmicintegration

Morgan Stanley”s router can

be accessed both directly and

indirectly using DMA, its

own algorithms and via its

cash trading desk.

Destinations

SORT is available globally.

Order types and clientreporting

Morgan Stanley”s SORT uses

various order types that allow

it to take and post liquidity. It

does not use order types that

leak order information or

route orders out of the

particular liquidity destination.

Morgan Stanley Analytics

provides pre-trade analytics,

detailed order entry, order

flow management, and

post-execution performance

measurement. Other post-trade

reports are provided

end of day with further

execution details.

Data feeds

SORT uses a combination of

feeds (i.e. consolidated feeds,

exchange direct feeds, and the

firm”s own proprietary feeds)

on a real-time and historical

basis.

Routing logic

Morgan Stanley”s smart order

routers are similar across

markets, with the exception of

nuances to comply with local

regulations. SORT routes

orders to the external lit

marketplace based on a

number of factors including –

but not limited to – best price, reliability/stability of the

venue, fill rates, speed and cost.

Clients can change routing

logic where permissible.

Heat maps are used and

orders can be dynamically

rerouted based on new

information.

SORT is programmed

with logic and limit checks to

prevent misrouting of orders

and has the ability to

recognise external outages

and not route to those

venues. There are also

fallback instances in case of

internal outage situations.

NightVision rests day

orders in dark pools in search

of liquidity. It does not send

indications of interest or

blind immediate-or-cancel

orders. The NightOwl

electronic trading tool allows

clients to leverage SORT and

NightVision to navigate both

lit and dark markets.

Future plans

Morgan Stanley continually

optimises its routers to keep

up with technical advances,

reduce internal latencies, and

account for external latencies.

Changes are also made based

on the ever-changing market

landscape.