The present invention relates to electronic trading systems for trading, for example, financial instruments such as spot FX or precious metals, and other financial instruments including but not limited to FRAs interest rate swaps, money, markets, options, metals, call money, government bonds and other short term interest rate instruments. In particular, the invention relates to a computerised trading system having a plurality of order input devices connected to a network for submission of and matching by the system of quotes (bids, offers), with hits (buy and sell) orders.
An anonymous trading system is described, for example, in EP-A-0,399,850, EP-A-0,406,026 and EP-A-0,411,748 each of which discloses an automated matching system for anonymous trading of foreign currencies (or other financial instruments). In this system, a single host computer maintains a central database of all trading instruments available for trade, credit information and bids and offers which have been submitted by terminals connected to the host via a computer network. The host computer uses information in its central database to match bids and offers and buy and sell orders based on matching criteria which include a counter party credit limit.
The counter party credit limits are set at each trading floor, and are stored at the host computer, which then establishes a gross counter party credit limit for each possible pair of counter-parties. The gross counter party credit limit is the minimum amount of the remaining credit from a first party to a second party, and the second party to the first party. The various trader terminals connected to the host computer maintain and display only a restricted subset of the information available at the host computer, such as best bids and offers.
A problem was identified with this system in that the host computer only used the credit information to check that a deal could proceed after a potential match had been identified. A trader thus could not know whether he had credit with a potential counter party prior to attempting to trade. This problem was identified and a solution provided in the system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,055.
In the system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,055 a credit matrix is derived and stored at a plurality of regional nodes of a distributed network, with each regional node distributing market information to a set of trader terminals to which the regional node is connected via an access node. The regional node is known as a Market Distributor and provides dealable price information to the trader terminals connected via the access node known as a Market Access Node. The actual matching of bids, offers, buy and sell commands is provided by separate nodes known as Arbitrators.
Traders do not always wish to make a quote (either a bid or offer) which would commit to a deal if hit by another trader, but may wish to explore the possibility of a deal by requesting other traders to make quotes. In direct dealing environments, whether conducted by telephone or direct dealing screen based systems such as EBS Direct provided by EBS Group Ltd of London UK, a trader can request a quote (e.g. I want a price for 100 Euro/USD) from potential counterparties. These potential counterparties may then choose to “make” prices.
Direct dealing systems are not anonymous and we have appreciated that if any attempt were made to integrate direct dealing systems with anonymous systems, simply allowing traders to input requests for quotes (RFQs) without control could substantially increase the number of messages transmitted in an anonymous computer trading system, unnecessarily using bandwidth but without providing any increase in speed of matching orders. We have appreciated, therefore, that it is preferable to limit the manner in which requests for quotes are made in an anonymous computer trading system. From a market point of view, as well as a technical point of view, unfettered submission of RFQs is undesirable as unscrupulous traders can submit RFQs to the market to find out what prices other parties are prepared to offer, and then withdraw the RFQ. Such behaviour would severely damage the integrity of the system as a trading system and prejudice traders from replying to RFQs.
Broadly, the invention provides a computer trading system for trading instruments in which traders may input requests for quotes which are distributed anonymously to trader terminals, but which must meet certain criteria. The criteria tackle both a business problem of preventing traders from repeatedly requesting quotes from others to determine market trends and also a technical problem of avoiding unnecessary messages in an anonymous trading system which has a finite capacity, which could degrade system performance.
The invention is defined in the independent claims to which reference is directed. Preferred features are set out in the dependent claims.
An embodiment of the invention will now be described, by way of example only, and with reference to the accompanying figures in which:
The purpose of systems embodying the various aspects of the invention is to allow parties to enter quotes and orders, which are then matched within the system. The system provides a platform for trading tradable products such as commodities and financial instruments including at least the following: FX Spot, FRAs, Forwards and also FX Forwards, CFDs, short-dated government and/or central bank paper, commercial bills, CDs, inter-bank deposits, commercial paper, reports, interest-rate futures, swaps, options, commodities such as metals and a miscellany of tailor-made variants on these basic products. These are all referred to as financial instruments.
Input interfaces submit quotes and hits which are then passed on to third parties via a computer network. The particular architecture of the trading system is not important although the arrangement of a plurality of broker nodes shown in
It is noted, for the avoidance of doubt, that the input interface may be an interface to another computer system by which quotes and hits are automatically submitted, or may be a trader terminal by which a trader may initiate quotes and responses. Thus, the system may be used with order input devices that are trader terminals from which human traders interface with the system, or order input devices which are automated trading interfaces which may run computer controlled trading algorithms which trade in the market in response to market conditions.
A quote is an instruction to bid or offer submitted by a trader to “make a market” and is distributed to others as a quote message and shown as part of a market view. Quotes are thus visible orders as they are visible to others in the sense that the price and amount are communicated and so available or displayed to either all or a group of other parties. A hit or take order is a buy or sell instruction submitted at an input interface by a party wishing to create a deal on the basis of a price displayed on his market view derived from one or more quotes. Hit/take orders are transmitted as order messages to the other party originating the corresponding quote message, but are not distributed as part of the market price.
A hit/take order does not remain in the system; if it cannot be dealt with when entered, it is removed. For this reason they are sometimes known as fill or kill orders. Hits are therefore orders that are invisible to other trading parties on the system in the sense that only the counterparty to the trade receives the order message. An Order Book is a list of all the available visible orders in the market. Since the Quotes are the only available orders, the book consists of a list of Quotes. The Quotes are arranged in a queue in the correct dealing order. The sort order of the queue may vary for different trading instruments. The default sort order is by price and time. In the system of
As mentioned above, the architecture of the system is not important although a distributed architecture is preferred with the system functionality distributed as will now be described with respect of
The computer trading network 14 embodying the invention of
The embodying system is preferably an anonymous trading system in which the market views produced by the brokers comprise price and amount information without identifying the source of the price. The prices displayed for available bids and offers and the amounts available at those prices are thus aggregates of one or more quotes. Only the quotes of parties satisfying the pre-screen credit criteria are included in the aggregate price displayed. The market views produced by the broker nodes thus differ from one trading floor to another depending on the credit allocation.
The trading agent node provides services to a specific trading floor or group of traders. These services include providing access to the network for each trading work station, completing deals, producing deal tickets and maintaining historical dealing information for traders. Each trading agent node must connect to at least one broker node to access the trading system. A group of trader terminals thus connects to a trading agent 10 to access the system.
Each Broker node 12 provides the basic order matching and price distribution services. The Broker nodes are arranged clique tree structure, which enables fast communications routing, following very specific but simple rules. The clique tree is a network structure where individual nodes are grouped into cliques, and the cliques are then arranged into a tree structure. Each Broker can be linked logically to a number of Brokers, which are referred to as its neighbor Brokers. Communication between Brokers is on an equal level, with no “up” or “down” direction in the network.
While Trading Agents must be connected to at least one Broker node, they themselves are not members of the Clique Tree, but remain outside the structure. A Trading Agent connected to multiple Broker nodes will receive multiple sets of market prices. Even though the price information from different Broker nodes can be substantially the same, the information may be received at different intervals. A Trading Agent will send a given trading order to only one Broker node.
The term Broker node is used to describe a computer arranged as a physical or logical node in a computer network providing a broking function. The basic broking function is the storing of quotes, providing the quotes to traders in the form of a market view and matching quotes and orders. The Broker nodes in the described embodiment also perform further functions, but these are not essential features of what is defined as a Broker node. It should be remembered that the broker nodes may also incorporate the functionality of the trading agents.
The Broker nodes are equal to each other, and perform the same functions. The arrangement of the network or their position in it is transparent to the broker nodes. They only need to know about their neighbours. Each Broker node has: knowledge of all orders in the market, and is able to match orders as soon as they are submitted. As a consequence of the fact that each Broker node maintains a full list of orders in the market, it is therefore able to customize market views as needed by the Trading Agents and is able to react faster to market information as soon as it is received.
Embodiments of the invention allow order input devices such as traders to enter requests for quotes (RFQs) at that are distributed to, and communicated to other order input devices in the system as request for quote (RFQ) messages. In the case of trader terminals operated by physical traders, these messages will be displayed to the traders on the screen of the trader workstation. In contrast to the display of quotes which are aggregated and all amounts available at a particular price displayed together, RFQs are displayed as amounts only. The responder to an RFQ may then propose a price for the amount requested in a response transmitted as a response message. The example described is for foreign exchange dealing, in which quotes comprise an amount of currency and a price (either a bid or offer price). The quote submitted in response to an RFQ is termed a “response” and is transmitted as a “response message”. This differs from a “quote” in that the response is initially sent only to the party that submitted the RFQ for display.
Embodiments of the invention in its various aspects provides mechanisms to prevent RFQs being submitted to the system, which would stand little realistic chance of resulting in a match with a counterparty quote. This addresses the technical problem of preventing unnecessary message flows throughout the system, which would use bandwidth, and also the business problem of preventing traders entering RFQs with no intention of dealing to test the market. Further mechanisms prevent multiple response messages from being transmitted which fail to match the RFQ to which the responses were transmitted. This is achieved by a new matching process for response messages.
A first mechanism prevents RFQs specifying a price outside a market range from being transmitted as RFQ messages. By requiring input interfaces (either traders at trader terminals or direct computer price feeds) wishing to enter RFQs to enter a price and by filtering based on that price, only RFQs with a realistic chance of matching are transmitted. Other mechanisms relate to the automatic matching of an RFQ with responses or with other RFQs. All such mechanisms aim to conclude a match with a minimum number of messages; if a party has submitted an RFQ which matches with another party, a deal is done. All these mechanisms may be used alone or in conjunction with one another. A party which submits an RFQ is committed to a deal if the systems finds a match.
The embodiment of the invention may operate on the same platform as an existing spot FX broking system so that actions in relation to RFQs can result in quotes being transmitted to the spot FX broking system. Thus, embodiments of the invention may operate on the EBS anonymous trading system provided by EBS Group Limited.
An example of a first mechanism in an embodiment of the invention is shown in
In the example shown, the RFQ submitted into the deal panel is shown summarised as USD/JPY 14 for 50 meaning request to buy 50 million (50 M) USD worth of Japanese Yen (JPY). The requester specifies a price at which they would be willing to deal, here 110.14 as a bid (summarised as 14), and no price is entered as an offer. In practice, a trader may choose to enter both bid and offer prices. The fact that only a bid price is entered means the requester only wishes to buy (not to sell). The entering of a price represents a commitment on the part of the requester to deal at the stated price or better.
The RFQ is submitted to the system 14 as RFQ message 24. The price indicated is then analysed to see whether it is within a given range. In particular, the requester's price must be within a given number of units of a system defined price, such as the system “best” or some other market indications such as a derived “benchmark” price. The benchmark may be derived from various predictive data, including historical prices, volumes and other calculations. If the price is outside this range, then the RFQ message 24 is rejected and the requester notified accordingly. This prevents traders entering spurious RFQs without any intention to trade, safe in the knowledge that no counterparty will instigate a trade.
A system defined price such as the “best” is the price for the given financial instrument at which the instrument is generally available within the system. In the system of
If the price specified in the RFQ message 24 is within the required range, then it is then anonymously distributed to other trader terminals (shown as potential responders) 18 with whom the requester trader has sufficient credit on a bilateral basis. Thus, only the trader terminals 18 that are able to deal with the requester receive and display the RFQ. An alternative would be for RFQs to be distributed irrespective of credit, although this is not preferred.
Each potential responder has a number of options for response. The RFQ is a request for responders to submit quotes. An offer could be submitted which could potentially match with the RFQ. In the example of
Any response messages are received in the system and are attempted to match against the RFQ. If a match is found based on amount (the response must be a price for the amount requested in this example), price and bilateral credit between the parties, then a deal is done. In this example, the RFQ is matched with the quote of responder 3.
The matching operation is based upon time then price priority (the amount being defined in the RFQ and responders must match this amount). In general, a responder must respond with an order for the amount specified in the RFQ. If a responder provides an order that can match the RFQ because it is for the correct side (e.g. an RFQ on the bid side matches an offer or sell) and for a better amount, then a match is done. In the example of
The offer submitted by responder 4 in this example, is not matched with the RFQ, because it was submitted after responder 3. Instead, a “response match” process is undertaken to determine whether the responses submitted in response to the RFQ can be matched with any other orders.
Responder 5 chose to submit a sell request. This also did not match the RFQ, because a match had already been done. The sell request is not acted upon further and is removed from the market.
The process involved in the aspect shown in
It will be appreciated from
A second mechanism in the embodiment of the invention is shown in
The matching of RFQs and quotes in this aspect follow certain rules. A request for quote message is matched with the first equal or better price submitted in a response message. The requester gets the benefit of the better price (i.e. if the quote is for a better price than the requester specified in the RFQ, the deal is done at that better price). A bid or offer is good until: (1) a deal is completed or (2) a dealer hits “off” and 5 seconds have elapsed from the time of submission.
Preferably, the time stamp is applied at the trader terminal when the order is submitted, although it may be applied at some other point in the system, for example when the order is received at the trading system from the trader terminal. What is important is that the time stamp is applied at the same point for each order so that orders from all trader terminals are dealt with in the same way.
In the example of
The second mechanism has the key points (also described in relation to the first mechanism) that matches are made on a time then price priority, provided that the price is within an acceptable range. This is unlike existing systems, which match on price then time. The process is as shown in
The third mechanism is shown in
A trader terminal 16 (requester 1) generates a request for quote 20 transmitted as RFQ message 24 through network 14 to potential counterparty trader terminals 18. In response, the potential counterparties may choose to submit quotes (whether bid or offer). In this case, two offers and two bids are submitted, but only one offer (responder 1) can match the RFQ and the deal is done. This leaves an offer and two bids pending in the system, which is then matched as far as possible. In this case, responder 2 and 3 match.
The time priority rule of aspect 2 is applied so that responder 1 submitted a quote first and so matches the requester. The subsequent responders 2 and 3 do not match the RFQ (because a match was already done) but can match each other because they are on opposite sides.
The process is shown in
Any responses not matched in accordance with the third mechanism described above, can be converted to visible quote messages and transmitted throughout the system as quote messages. This feature ay be optional and a trader designates at the time of submitting a response to an RFQ whether they are willing for the response to be converted to a quote.
The fourth mechanism operates in a similar manner to the third mechanism only request for quote messages are matched with one another where no matching quote is submitted.
In this example, shown in
It will be appreciated that the embodiments of the invention described have the advantage of providing a system in which RFQs may be submitted into an anonymous trading system in a manner which prevents speculative quotes and so overloads the system and lures unsuspecting counterparties to give up valuable market information. The system requires a party submitting an RFQ to specify an acceptable price at which he will trade and commits the trader to the trade is a match is made. Embodiments of the invention are particularly advantageous to traders who wish to submit large orders into the market. In a conventional anonymous trading system, even if subdivided into a number of separate orders, the dealing of a very large amount is likely, merely by its presence in the market, to cause the market to move, which may be to the detriment of the trader wishing to trade the amount. Embodiments of the present invention avoid this disadvantage.
In the embodiments described, the party submitting the RFQ also includes a buy or sell price which is communicated to the system but not to other trader terminals. In a further embodiments of the invention, not shown, the RFQ may be accompanied by both a buy and a sell price. As with the previous embodiment, these prices must be within the given range. However, the trader submitting the RFQ is not obliged to trade on both sides (buy and sell) if both buy and sell responses are received from other traders. Instead, the trader submitting the quote may choose to aither accept a buy response, a sell response, or even both. However, the trader must accept at least one side if that side is a good as or better than the price submitted by the trader on that side. This enables traders to deal on the side of the order that, in their judgement, gives them the best chance of making a profit.
As with the embodiments described above, the bids and offers that are matched with the order behind the RFQ are not necessarily the best prices that are submitted but the first order that is as good as or better than the price submitted with the RFQ to the system.
In a further embodiment of the invention, the prices from a number of responders may be aggregated such that the aggregate amount of several orders fills the amount specified in the RFQ. In this situation, the prices dealt with the parties contibuting to the aggregation may be different providing they each are at least good enough to be dealt.
In a still further embodiment, rather than matching on a time—price priority, the system may wait for a determined period of time, say 5 seconds, and then match the best response bid or offer that has been submitted in that time, provided it is at least as good as the price specified with the RFQ. In the case where two or more orders are received at the same price within the time period, the match may be made with the first received at that price. Alternatively or additionally, the matching rules may take into account the size of the potentially matching orders so that of two orders at the same price, the one that fills the RFQ amount will be matched even if it was received later. If all orders at the best price fully fill the RFQ amount, then time priority may again be used to decide which order to match.
Many other modifications to the embodiments described are possible and will occur to those skilled in the art without departing from the scope of the invention which is defined by the following claims.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60570424 | May 2004 | US |