Valdi expanded with front office analytics
SunGard is expanding its Valdi suite of trading tools with the introduction of a product that takes real-time trade execution and financial analytics to the front office.
SunGard’s Valdi Trading Analytics (VTA) is aimed at helping financial services firms to better control costs and increase profits.
“One of the biggest challenges facing capital markets and trading firms is the ability to drill down into the granular components of trading costs, in real-time, across asset classes, to achieve superior trading results and optimal business decision-making,” Laurie Berke, from TABB Group, said.
Using VTA, firms can conduct pre-trade transaction cost analysis, execution performance evaluation, profit and loss attribution and reconciliation across multiple trading and back-office systems.
Interactive Data expands its real-time services
Trading solutions firm Interactive Data Corporation is expanding its real-time fixed income pricing services to include evaluations.
Interactive Data, which already delivers end-of-day fixed income evaluations, will now also provide real-time data every 15 seconds.
“The fixed income markets are changing, and we see growing opportunity to provide independent real-time evaluated fixed income pricing to the front office to support pre-trade transparency and investment analysis,” Mark Hepsworth, president of its pricing and reference data business, said.
Interactive Data also planned to add real time pricing to Vantage, its fixed income transparency display application.
FlexTrade improves flagship EMS platform
FlexTrade Systems has integrated a tool for complex event processing (CEP) and tick data to its flagship portfolio trading application.
FlexTrade, a provider of order and execution management systems (EMS), will add OneTick – a single solution for CEP and tick data that spans both historical and real-time – to EMS platform FlexTRADER. It will also use OneTick’s database to store tick data, trade data and post trade analysis across asset classes, including equities, foreign exchange and derivatives.
“Financial firms today are under increased pressure to develop and execute sophisticated quantitative trading strategies that can quickly discover untapped alpha in these volatile market conditions,” Richard Chmiel, senior vice-president at OneMarketData, creator of OneTick, said.
John Barker joins BCS Prime Brokerage
Brokerage services provdier BCS Prime Brokerage has confirmed the appointment of former European head of buyside trading platform Liquidnet John Barker to its board.
Barker, who has joined BCS as a non-executive director, has more than 20 years of management experience in financial markets.
Edward Golosov, one of the founding partners of BCS Financial Group, has also joined the board as an executive director. They will both work in London alongside existing executive directors Rizwan Kayani and Vitaliy Shelikhovskiy.
“BCS Financial Group welcomes John and Edward, who bring a wealth of experience to our colleagues in London. We look forward to working with them as they assist in the expansion of our international business,” said Roman Lokhov, chief executive of global markets and investment banking at BCS.
S&P Capital IQ’s adds algo features
S&P Capital IQ’s Real Time Solution is releasing its latest automated trading platform with new genetic algorithm features.
QuantFACTORY has been upgraded, offering a complete set of tools designed to help US, European and Asian clients optimise the automated trading development cycle – from data acquisition to alpha discovery and back-testing to production.
“The new genetic algorithm features will allow clients to accelerate the time to market of their automated trading models,” Stephane Leroy, vice-president, head of Global Real Time Solutions, said.
The tool’s genetic algorithm features lets clients apply ‘parallelisation’ – allowing them to run multiple back tests to identify the best trading parameters in a short time period.
Otkritie offers automatic ruble-dollar conversion
Russian firm Otkritie Capital is launching a new service that allows automatic real-time currency conversions from the Russian ruble to US dollar.
Otkritie has partnered with trading technology vendor SunGard to launch a direct market access (DMA) service, which will automatically convert ruble-denominated transactions executed on Moscow Exchange’s MICEX order books. The new service is aimed at allowing clients to remain currency-neutral and avoid the complexities of ruble clearing and holding.
It is available on SunGard’s Valdi and FIX-enabled trading applications, and to the SunGard Global Network community.
Clients will also have access to Russian trading venues through integrated access to an algorithmic trading service.
“Partnering with SunGard to offer this new conversion and algorithmic offering will enable our clients to leverage Otkritie’s renowned expertise on Russian capital markets, and ultimately benefit from and facilitate new trading in Russia,” Serge Alexandre, sales director of International Electronic Trading Services at Otkritie, said.