Sell-Side Technology Awards 2020: Best Smart Order Routing Product/Tool—Dash Financial Technologies

Dash Financial Technologies takes home the award for the best smart order routing product/tool from this year’s Sell-Side Technology Awards. The technology provider has spent years developing Sensor, its signature algorithmic routing solution, which includes a full suite of benchmark and liquidity capture strategies for US options and equities. The platform was designed to be fully customizable and configurable. 

Sell-side firms can interact with Dash’s market structure experts and its proprietary interface, Algo Wizard, to help fine-tune and implement strategies, preferences, and workflows in real time. Users can adjust all aspects of the strategy to meet their needs in terms of liquidity and fee structures—such as changing venues or order types. “We give our clients the ability to customize routing tables at the click of a button,” says Stino Milito, co-COO of Dash. “So, when it comes to functions that would be very complicated for coders or developers to program into smart order routers, our infrastructure can do that and has always allowed for changes to be made with the click of a button.” 

Clients can measure the impact of any changes or customization using the Dash 360 analytics portal to provide a transparent view of execution performance and make tweaks to their routing set up. Milito says one of the key differentiators of the Dash suite is that it uses synthetic order types to source additional liquidity or liquidity at reduced exchange fees, which clients would not typically see on their trading screens. Dash can use synthetic order types to interact with an exchange’s order book and request quotes on behalf of clients. 

Another unique factor is that clients have access to Dash’s alternative trading system, which they can use to look for additional liquidity and reduced fees. 

Over the last year and as part of the Sensor platform, Dash has rolled out a new algorithm called Improve, designed to probe the market and look for better prices submitted in the order. In the coming 12 months, the vendor will also be releasing products designed to be used for volatile trading scenarios in the options market.