Buy-Side Technology Awards 2013: Best Commodities Trading Platform—Misys

When it comes to a field as sprawling as commodities, functionality and flexibility are the key factors in any competent platform’s design. With Sophis Value, Misys has presented a feature-rich and efficient way to trade across assets and commodity types. Supporting oil, gas, coal, power, freight, emissions, soft commodities, plastics, weather, precious metals and base metals, Sophis Value is designed to handle high trade volumes, with data from Bloomberg and Reuters built in, as well as custom options for illiquid instruments. Its market coverage supports a range of commodity derivatives and straight commodity products, while connectivity to execution platforms and trade repositories gives it straight-through capabilities for derivatives trading. User-specific functionality includes the ability for fund managers to select transactions according to desired criteria, such as counterparty and underlying assets.

As in the wider capital markets, risk and regulation are prime concerns for commodities traders. The integration of risk indicators and scenarios, as well as the ability to view profit-and-loss (P&L) reports in real time, is a powerful function. The “greeks” are supported through main analysis views across commodity buckets, with enhanced capabilities incorporated, such as crossed gamma, and vega matrix by strike and maturity.

Looking ahead, in line with the trend toward cross-asset strategies, Sophis Value includes a Structured Trading module for the implementation of hybrid products that stretch across equities, commodities, and foreign exchange. In addition, the inclusion of the London Metal Exchange base and precious metal trading functionality provides users with lending, inventory, and collateral-management abilities. Users can build their own cross-asset and hybrid products through a toolkit or application programming interface. It’s this ability to look beyond the necessary to what might be required by a wide variety of users, that places Misys Sophis Value at the very top of its game.

Misys Reaction:
“We are delighted to have won this prestigious award, which demonstrates our committed efforts to delivering innovative market-leading solutions to our clients. Financial events over the last five years have highlighted the need for enhanced and integrated portfolio and risk management capabilities within the buy side. Misys Sophis Value has long been recognized as a leader for equity derivatives and this award for our commodities platform is a tremendous validation of our cross-asset coverage, and is a real testament to the commitment of our team at Misys Sophis.”
—Tim Green, general manager, buy side, Misys