Brazil absorbs international trading solutions
Thomson Reuters has launched its Elektron hosting and managed services network in Brazil, aiming to provide trading firms with cost effective, low-latency access to the real-time data required to fuel algorithmic and high-frequency trading strategies in Brazil.
Based in São Paulo, the Elektron data solution provides high-speed connectivity, market pricing, US-traded American depository receipts and CME futures data for Brazil’s BM&F Bovespa exchange. By accessing the Elektron services, local firms can consume local and global real-time data from some 350 venues and hundreds of OTC market contributors.
Meanwhile, trading technology provider TradingScreen has launched TradePlus, its order management system for the sell-side in Brazil, which integrates all trading infrastructure required by broker-dealers through a software as a service model.
TradePlus is integrated into the firm’s TradeSmart execution management system for the buy-side, allowing better communication between brokers and clients. TradingScreen’s clients will also benefit from an exchange co-located in a local data centre and an office in Brazil to ensure low-latency.
In addition, Custom Connect, a provider of network solutions, claims that it is now delivering the lowest possible round trip latency of 106 milliseconds between São Paulo and New Jersey, USA.
The route is intended to provide for foreign investors, who accounted for early 35% of total trade volume on BM&F Bovespa last year, representing over 49 million trades.
“This low-latency route opens important opportunities for traders ad other financial firms, looking to increase exposure to Latin America and diversify their product portfolio,” said Jan Willem Meijer, executive director at Custom Connect. “This connection allows trading desks and other financial firms to develop innovative high-frequency trading strategies, products and services incorporating securities traded through the leading financial exchange in São Paulo.”
BATS Chi-X Europe and TOM MTF gain access options
Co-location services provider Interxion has added an access point at its City of London data centre to allow market participants to connect to European multilateral trading facility (MTF) BATS Chi-X Europe.
The access point aims to reduce the cost and complexity of connectivity to BATS Chi-X Europe, both for routing orders and picking up data feeds.
“We’re committed to increasing value to BATS Chi-X Europe trading participants and providing them the ability to choose the connectivity option that best suits their needs,” said Paul O’Donnell, chief operating officer at BATS Chi-X Europe. “Our decision to open an access point at Interxion’s City of London data centre is based on its central location and accessibility to a large number of market participants.”
Meanwhile, financial technology provider SunGard is now providing access to Dutch retail-focused platform TOM MTF, which offers trading in shares derivatives and exchange-traded funds, via the SunGard Valdi Market Access service.
The Valdi Market Access service provides connectivity on a software as a service basis, via the SunGard Global Network (SGN). The direct market access service helps exchange members and their clients trade on electronic markets from any SGN application.
“The emergence of new trading platforms such as TOM MTF continues to drive market fragmentation in Europe,” said Philippe Carré, global head of connectivity for SunGard’s capital markets business. “Our customers will now be able to incorporate TOM MTF’s growing liquidity pool in their smart routing strategies.”
BT software cloud solutions reduce latency
BT has set out a series of additions to its BT Radianz Cloud portfolio and BT Radianz Proximity Services that will extend the footprint of its hosting abilities at non-BT data centres and provide the lowest latency between trading venues.
Called BT Radianz Venue, the new services are designed to help customers address the challenges of liquidity, fragmentation and new trading opportunities while enhancing trade execution performance.
BT Radianz Venue consists of three services – BT Radianz Venue Interconnect, Venue Access and Venue Presence. These offer low latency venue connectivity and monitoring, connectivity to the BT Radianz Cloud and managed infrastructure services.
Portware reports rising FX volumes
Trading solutions provider Portware has reported a 24% quarterly increase in FX volumes traded through its system.
Portware’s FX trading platform aggregtes all dealer and electronic communications network liquidity and provides customisable algorithmic trading strategies for FX trading. It includes algorithms from FX dealers, support for all order types and complete lifecycle straight-through processing. Portware FX also includes the firm’s FX Liquidity Monitor, the Portware FX transaction cost analysis and post-trade analytics package designed to give traders reporting and visibility into their trading performance.
“Portware’s growth has accelerated over the past three years even as the industry has contracted, which is a testament to our long-term client relationships, technology innovation and passion for advanced engineering,” said Alfred Estandar, CEO of Portware.
China Everbright Securities opts for ULLINK trading solutions
Chinese asset manager Everbright Securities has gone live with market connectivity and trading solutions provider ULLINK’s order management solution in Hong Kong.
The solution includes client order collection from multiple networks, care order management with institutional trading front-ends, pre-trade risk-management and direct market access to Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx). The entire setup is provided as a service, where ULLINK hosts and manages the infrastructure in the name of China Everbright Securities.
China Everbright Securities is a subsidiary of Everbright Securities, one of mainland China’s largest financial institutions. The firm’s Hong Kong operation will manage its mainland institutional order flow across foreign markets as well as offer mainland customers direct market access to HKEx.
“We chose ULLINK because of the flexibility of their platform, the efficiency of the support model, and their ability to help us grow in the region on a long-term basis, as a partner,” said Andy Wong, executive director and head of trading at China Everbright Securities.
ULLINK has also released the latest version of its connectivity trading platform, UL BRIDGE 4, which doubled the latency reduction from its predecessor while increasing message throughput. All business processes available on UL BRIDGE will take advantage of these enhancements, including the library of 70 market gateways, the library of 500 adaptors to the trading systems of the world, the pre-trade risk applications, the smart order router and the algorithms.
“All our managed software and managed services clients are natively going to be migrated to this new technology in the months to come,” said Laurent Useldinger, CEO, ULLINK.
Orc adds OTC IOIs via Cscreen
Technology provider Orc has integrated its trading products with Cscreen, NYSE Liffe’s global pre-trade price discovery platform, providing traders with a more efficient way of interfacing indications of interest for equity and index derivatives from inter-dealer brokers.
NYSE Liffe is exchange group NYSE Euronext’s London-based derivatives business. The Cscreen integration is intended to allow Orc users to bring together their activities in the OTC equity derivatives markets alongside their on-screen trading. It enables traders to price and assess any incoming indications of interest, maintaining an aggregated comprehensive view of total trading risk in listed and OTC markets.
“Having more accurate information available in a more concise and aggregated view will give our customers the added benefit of a clearer and more informed platform on which to make trading decisions,” said Jason Lee, head of Cscreen, NYSE Liffe.