Sell-Side Technology Awards 2014: Best Sell-Side Automated Trading Platform — smartTrade Technologies

LiquidityFX, smartTrade’s FX trading platform, offers smart order routing (SOR) functionality, liquidity aggregation, pricing and distribution, and order management for spot FX, non-deliverable forwards (NDFs), swaps, and precious metals.

“Trade automation does not mean a one-size-fits-all method for market execution and we realize that each client has a different relationship with their liquidity providers and their own method of aggressing the market,” says David Vincent, CEO of smartTrade. “The system comes out-of-the-box with many ways to configure how the market is accessed, and we have been adding additional logic here to ensure that our clients can be more flexible in this space. Some of this work adds support for increasing numbers of algo order types, but we have also augmented the smart order routing logic to cover the whole order lifecycle from entry to execution.”

Through a hosted environment, LiquidityFX aims to help tier-one and tier-two institutions reduce their costs and time to market while delivering this technology without the incursion of volume-based fees. Using an open system that allows clients’ application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate with post-trade processes, users can visualize all orders and their current states within the system. When it comes to SOR, this allows smartTrade to report all the steps for SOR of each child order as well as the snapshot of the market for each order routed.

In 2013, smartTrade enhanced its order management system (OMS) functionality to allow clients to combine voice and e-flow in one workflow. For its client portal, smartTrade opted for the HTML5 programming language to create a customized environment for the client.

“As we see an increasing need for all systems to work collectively without information silos, we enabled the OMS to give detailed information on the orders it is managing to other systems such as analytics, pricing, and position keeping,” Vincent says. “We also made use of our HTM5 technology to introduce an intuitive front-end allowing traders to quickly and easily slice and dice the order book, getting them the most useful information and control with the least desk space possible.”

“Some of this work adds support for increasing numbers of algo order types, but we have also augmented the smart order routing logic to cover the whole order lifecycle from entry to execution.” —David Vincent, smartTrade Technologies