A system and method for user defined markets for electronic trading is disclosed. In one embodiment, a technology platform is provided that allows a user to define a new market for electronic trading and automatically generate the new market for live trading. In one embodiment, the new market is automatically tested using a trading simulator that simulates the new market for electronic trading.

Benchmarks for the price of a financial instrument such as FX spot rate for a currency pair are calculated by an algorithm based on a previous benchmark and a market price. The market price is derived from a deal price and a quote price. The deal price is based on deals conducted since the last benchmark and the quote price is based on bids and offers entered since the last benchmark. For each of the deal and quote prices, a price, weight and scatter is calculated which is used to calculate a benchmark price, weight and scatter and a benchmark error.

Order flow information is used to provide traders with an enhanced market data feed. The external market data are overlaid with detailed internal customer order flow data to produce an enhanced virtual order book that more accurately reflects the best price and quantity available to traders at the receiving location and also the market liquidity behind that current best price. If a market impact overlay processor at a particular location closer to the exchange has access to customer order flow data from other more remote locations, the resultant enhanced virtual order book may not only be shared with traders at the closer location but also may be broadcast to market impact overlay processors at the remote locations, which may further enhance the shared data with more recent customer order flow data that would have not been received at the closer location at the time the enhanced data was broadcast.

An anonymous trading system includes a prime broker facility that allows a third party to trade on behalf of an institution. A deal is executed between the third party and a counter-party and a further deal is then executed between the third party and the party on whose behalf it has traded. The second deal may be for the same amount as the first deal or may be altered to include the third party’s fee for conducting the first deal. Clients of the third party have prices available to them for trades made via the third party which are displayed at their trader terminals. The client sees that a better price is available though the third party than by dealing direct and selects to conduct a deal through the third party.

A computer trading system includes a quote screening function configured to accept quotes specifying a quote amount in a price where the quote amount is greater than a minimum quote amount to produce screen quote messages and to reject quotes specifying a quote amount less than the minimum quote amount. A market view generator generates market views from those quotes which specify an amount greater than or equal to the minimum quote amount. An order screening function only accepts orders specifying an amount less than a maximum transaction amount submitted in response to the market views to produce screened order messages. A transaction processor receives screened quote messages and screened order messages and matches appropriate messages with each other. The minimum quote amount is substantially equal to or greater than the maximum transaction amount whereby a screened order message can be matched entirely with one screened quote message.

An anonymous computerised trading system matches orders by conducting auctions at specified times. As well as entering orders, participants assign credit limits for the duration of the auction, thus minimizing the time for which credit is allocated to the system.

Best bid and best offer rate data from deals concluded on an anonymous trading system in a fungible instrument such as a foreign currency pair are processed to derive indicative rates. A minimum indicative rates spread between bid and offer prices is defined. The indicative rate bid and offer prices are set to the received best bid and offer prices and alternately an amount is added to the indicative offer rates and subtracted from the indicative bid rates until the spread between the indicative bid and offer rates is greater than or equal to the predefined minimum indicative rates spread and greater than the spread between the best bid and offer prices.

A trading system such as an anonymous trading system for trading financial and other instruments can vocalize trading data to trader workstations as well as display it on a screen. Where a trader selects to receive vocal announcements, a trading floor identifier unique to his trading floor is also announced at random intervals.

An anonymous trading system includes a prime broker facility that allows a third party to trade on behalf of an institution. A deal is executed between the third party and a counter-party and a further deal is then executed between the third party and the party on whose behalf it has traded. The second deal may be for the same amount as the first deal or may be altered to include the third party’s fee for conducting the first deal. Clients of the third party have prices available to them for trades made via the third party which are displayed at their trader terminals. The client sees that a better price is available though the third party than by dealing direct and selects to conduct a deal through the third party.

Quotes entered into an automated trading system may comprise a visible, or primary, amount, and a linked or hidden amount. The visible amount only is shown to other traders on the system but part or all of the linked amount may be dealt if the order with with the quote is match is for an amount greater than the visible amount. If, after matching and deal confirmation, all the visible amount has been dealt, but some or all of the linked amount remains, a fresh order for the remaining linked amount is generated and submitted to the trading system for matching. The new quoted may be visible only or may have a visible component up to a limit specified by the maker on submission of the original quote, with the remainder being linked. Maker quotes converted to taker quotes by an auto-match routine may be resubmitted for undealt linked amounts in the same way. In one aspect of the invention, linked amounts are matched and dealt before visible amounts.

In a trading system market data from a matching engine is distributed by a broker to a plurality of trading floors repeatedly every T seconds, typically one second. This one second distribution period is divided into a plurality of time slots and each trading floor is randomly assigned to a slot. Data for a given trading floor is calculated and distributed during the time slot assigned to that floor. The position of a trading floor relative to others is varied by swapping a pair of adjacent time slots every J distribution periods.

An anonymous trading system for financial instruments comprises a network of broking nodes each performing a bid and offer matching function and a market view distribution function. Trader terminals are connected to the network via trading agent nodes. During deal execution a credit check is performed and once the deal is complete the identity of the counterparty becomes known to the other counterparty to the deal. The originating counterparty may send a More quantity message to the other party proposing a further deal at the same price. The other party may decline, partially accept, accept or accept and propose a still further amount. Credit for the further deal is drawn from an external source and the internal credit limits are temporarily increased or disabled to prevent the deal from being rejected.

An anonymous trading system comprises an interconnected network of broking nodes arranged in cliques which receive buy and sell orders from trader terminals via connected trading engines and which match persistent orders, executed deals and distribute price information to trader terminals. Where two orders are matched, a proposed deal message is sent by the matching broker. If another broker has processed an event which makes the matched quote unavailable the match fails and rematch may occur. Rematch may be attempted by an intermediate broker provided it owns one side of the match, or it received both sides of the match from brokers in different cliques. The intermediate broker attempts to match with the next available quote in the queue.

Price improvement in credit screened trading systems is achieved by entering a maximum price improvement (MPI) amount with a maker quote. The system prepares separate quote queues for each trading floor including only quotes where bilateral credit exists. Quotes are arranged using Price, MPI, time priority. When a quote is dealt, a dealable price improvement is calculated as the amount of the MPI required to improve the dealt quote’s position in the queue.

In an electronic trading system, prime brokerage services may be provided by assigning one or more dependent or child deal codes to a deal code. Prime broker trades are conducted via the dependent deal codes but appear to the market as deals with the parent deal code using credit assigned to the parent deal code. The prime bank customer is a dependent deal code of the customer bank which also trades on the system, allowing credit to be allocated by the customer dependent code for prime broker trades. A deal code may have several dependent deal codes which can trade with one another. Dependent deal codes can be used to expand the size of trading floors beyond that which can be supported by a single deal code and to assist in migration between system versions.

An anonymous trading system comprises a network of broker nodes each of which perform price matching, deal execution and market distribution. Trader terminals on trading floors are connected to a given broker node via a trading agent node. Credit may be stored for a given trading floor at its trading agent node or at a credit agent node which stores credit limits for a group of trading floors. Where the credit limits of a party to a proposed deal are stored at a credit agent node, the deal execution process is routed through that credit agent node to check for available credit. The system allows institutions to adopt any combination of local and global credit assignments with counterparties with which it wishes to trade.

Computerized trading system for trading financial instruments having a communication network connecting traders dealing in financial instruments and a plurality of trader terminals connected to the communication network. The communication network comprises a credit store for storing an indication of credit available from each credit granting entity, a price distributor for distributing the price quotation messages to trader terminal for display, a credit filter to filter the price quotation messages to each trader terminal associated with at least one credit granting entity.

An anonymous trading system comprises a network of broker nodes, each of which have an equal status and can match orders, initiate deals and distribute prices. Trading agents are connected to some or all of the broker nodes. The network is arranged to conform to a series of rules and in a preferred embodiment the brokers are arranged as a clique tree.

A process for displaying quotes on a trader’s screen used in an automatic trading system of the type which includes a plurality of traders. Some, but not all, of the traders have bilateral credit with one another, those traders having bilateral credit with one another being traded in counterparties. A quote made by the first trader is displayed in the first trader’s trading screen and when his quote can be accepted by more than one, but less than all trading counterparties, an indication of that fact is provided to him. In one embodiment, an indication is provided to the first trader of the percentage of trading counterparties that can accept his quote.

Joint execution type compound orders can be processed in an anonymous trading system comprising a plurality of broker nodes each of which includes an order matching functionality and a market distribution functionality. Trader agent nodes are connected to a number of dealer terminals grouped in trading floors and also to a broker node. Joint execution orders are entered as hit orders and are all matched by the broker during the hit or the order is cancelled. If matches are made the taker’s trading agent does not complete any of the deals marking up the order until it knows that all the deals are executable. The system may be used to allow traders to hit bids and offers in currency pairs synthesized from other currency pairs. In this arrangement the dealer enters a simple order in the synthetic currency and the taker’s trading agent converts it into a joint execution order.

In a duplex chat conversational trading system, trader terminals monitor for new incoming messages from the time a trader starts to input a new message to the time it is sent. If an incoming message is detected, sending of the message is inhibited and the trader is alerted to the new incoming message whereupon he can confirm his message, modify it or resend it. Messages are exchanged via a chat server which assigns a unique reference number to each message. Where a message received at the server is sent in reply to an earlier message it carries the reference of the earlier message. The server compares this reference to the most recent reference it has logged and notifies the parties of a crossover if the references are not the same.

An anonymous trading system suitable for trading foreign exchange or other fungible instruments comprises a network of broking nodes each of which have equal status and each of which perform the function of matching orders input into the systems, executing trades and distributing market views. Trading agent nodes are connected to some or all of the broking nodes and act as an interface between trader terminals or other order input devices through which orders are submitted to the system, and the broking nodes. Orders may be input into the system as visible quotes or invisible hits.

An improved multiple order facility for a computerized trading system in which a first trader submits a plurality of orders for display and acceptance by other traders, including a first subsystem which permits the first trader to simultaneously generate a plurality of orders, and a second subsystem which displays the orders at computer terminals of the other traders to whom the orders were sent. Using the first subsystem, the first trader selects one or more financial instruments associated with a respective one of the orders from a displayed list of related financial instruments, selects a common quantity to be applied to each of the orders, and selects, for each order, a respective price at which the first trader is willing to buy or sell the financial instrument associated with that order. Each of the orders is then sent to a plurality of other trading using the computerized trading system. The second subsystem provides a display of the orders at computer terminals for each of the other traders to whom the orders were sent. Each order display includes the price for the financial instrument associated with the order as selected by the first trader; and an available quantity of the financial instrument associated with the order, the available quantity initially being equal to the common quantity set by the first trader and being reduced whenever a deal is made covering only a part of any of the plurality of orders by any of the other traders.

For each quote entered into a computerized anonymous trading system, the system determines if it is waiting to be “hit” (would be matched with the first hit of a predetermined size) at a substantial number of trading floors, and if so, notifies the trader originating the quote. The substantial number of floors is preferably expressed as greater than a predetermined percentage of the available trading partners with whom credit has been established on a bilateral basis, and is preferably greater than 25%. In an alternate embodiment, the system provides a graphical display to the market maker originating a particular quote indicating how many trading floors are poised to hit that particular quote, and/or a numeric display indicating a price that would be Hittable by a predetermined number or percentage of available trading partners.

A method for vocalizing information from an electronic brokerage system (EBS) used in international currency exchange incorporates a specialized grammar to emulate the interpersonal trading style and vernacular used by foreign currency brokers catering to the international banking industry. Used in conjunction with the screen display of an EBS, the vocalizing method makes the system easier for a trader to use by emphasizing information content. The vocalizing method optimizes redundancy of data available to the user to minimize both the ambiguity of data to and the cognitive effort of the user. The vocalizing method chooses what data should be vocalized, when the data should be vocalized, and, in what manner the data should be vocalized. For example, a long form of the offer and bid prices is initially vocalized which includes both figure and pips data, but thereafter only the pips are vocalized. Three categories of messages each provide different data to the system user. First, market broadcast messages provide quote and bid information. Second, maker and taker specific messages provide specific deal information between the parties to an ongoing or completed transaction. Third, system deals and price change reasons messages provide all workstations dealing in the currency pair with recent prices given and paid for that currency pair, at least when it affects the current best price. The trader may have none, all, one, or two of the three categories of messages vocalized by setting the workstation trader profile accordingly. Additionally, the trader may choose with which of a variety of voices the workstation will speak.