TT Fills Top Buy-Side Need with Multibroker Solution

For five years, Chicago-based derivatives software vendor Trading Technologies (TT), attempted to adapt its X_Trader derivatives trading platform to incorporate multiple brokers, without success. The technology proved too complicated. Not long ago it achieved a breakthrough, and yesterday announced the beta launch of its MultiBroker ASP solution.

With MultiBroker, clients can enter orders from a single X_Trader workstation or application programming interface (API) and send them to any of its participating brokers through a direct market access (DMA) network. They transition between brokers through a single screen and route orders through TTNet, TT's hosting solution. Previously, buy-side traders had to own a separate workstation for each broker.

Tim Geannopulos, EVP of sales, says this release fulfills the No. 1 request of the company's buy-side clientele. "Certain brokers specialize in some markets vs others. Certain brokers specialize in proprietary algos over others. Certain brokers are providing capital introduction. Certain brokers have a different relationship with the buy side than others."

TT is especially proud of the number of brokers that signed up for the beta program - 11 of the 19 futures commission merchants (FCMs) it connects to. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan, Jefferies, Macquarie Bank, Mizuho Securities USA, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets and UBS are all on board.

"You can look at the multi-broker product in a defensive way or you can look at it in an offensive way," Geannopulos says. "By these brokers signing up, they understand that they're opening themselves up to competition from where they're a single broker but they also see the opportunities from an offensive standpoint of competing for business with multi-broker accounts."

Beyond broker access, MultiBroker has the same functionality as the old single-broker tool, including the visual programming platform, ADL, TT API and FIX API with the ability to define routing rules and pre-allocate orders to multiple brokers. In MultiBroker, separate pre-execution margin, credit and position limits are maintained by each broker while buy-side users have a single integrated view of positions and P&L across all brokers.

TT plans to be out of beta by the summer.