Finamex Adds Apama; Barclays in Orc Software Relationship
February 26, 2007
Finamex, which in January went live with an electronic trading system from New York-based TradingScreen, expects to launch Apama in March, said Mark Palmer, VP and general manager for the Progress Apama unit. Finamex will create and customize algorithmic strategies in the Apama Event Modeler complex event processing environment. Institutional customers will be able to monitor their trading strategies on customized dashboards.
The moves by both Finamex and Barclays Capital, which is initially focused on Asia, indicate how advanced trading technology is rapidly spreading beyond the U.S. and Europe and into emerging markets as well.
"As the Mexican
market begins to take up algorithmic trading, buy-side clients are
looking for flexible, customized services that will bring them an
advantage," Carlos Ramirez Cervera, head of electronic trading
systems at Finamex, said in a press release. "For Finamex, the
expertise and proven track record of the Apama team in the
algorithmic trading space was also an important factor. The team
will work with us on an ongoing basis in the development and
deployment of innovative algorithmic trading strategies."
Palmer said that the market for algorithmic tools in Latin America is "nascent, but growing," and can be viewed in the context of globalization of capital markets. Local firms in Latin America are beginning to deploy algorithmic models, while traders in more mature regions are using trading technology to reach into emerging markets. "This announcement is the tip of the iceberg," Palmer said. "You're going to see more and more of this."
He added that Apama's complex event processing functionality helps traders design algorithms that determine when to trade, based on factors such as shifts in prices or market volume. The algorithms designed with Apama then interact with an execution management system's algorithms, such as a volume-weighted average price model, which determine how to trade to minimize market impact.
The challenge for a complex event processing system is that there are multiple streams of data to analyze and multiple points of execution for multiple asset classes that need to be watched simultaneously, Palmer said. "Nothing monitors just one source of event data," he said. "You are monitoring constantly, and as your strategy is executed, you are monitoring fill rates and depth of the market in the middle of one stream."
On the deal between the Barclays investment banking arm's prime services business and Stockholm-based Orc, Martin Koopman, president of Orc North America, said that the company's ExNet provides both buy-side-to-sell-side and broker-to-broker connectivity. Orc customers can use its technology for direct access to any of more than 100 exchanges and trading venues. The Barclays initiative begins with listed-equities trading in Asia, with plans eventually to include all exchange-traded products.
Angus Yang, director and head of equity prime services for Asia-Pacific at Barclays Capital in Tokyo, said ExNet will help "expand the distribution of Barclays Capital's global electronic access products worldwide." Barclays Capital's prime services unit provides clearing, custody, credit, securities lending, repurchase agreements, and trade execution for equities, bonds, currency, commodities, equity swaps, and futures and options.
