Bob's Guide to Commodities Technology

Bob's guide to commodities technology feature OpenLink's Endur platform, SunGard's Kiodex and Calypso's trading solutions. Automatic calculation of VAR seems to be a widely-touted functionality. The CEO and Founder of Calypso is ex-Bank of America, Berkeley graduate, Charles Marston. Not mentioned in Bob's Guides is TT's X-Trader, which appears to have well-built execution functionality.

ICE closes US trade floor as Options go Electronic

The ICE Futures U.S exchange (formerly the NY Board of Trade) is closing its trading floor from October 2012 as volume goes electronic. All options listed on ICE Futures U.S will then trade exclusively through its electronic trading system.

Ben Jackson is president of the US business. He started his career in the Financial Services Strategy Practice of Andersen Consulting.

In April 2011, electronic execution accounted for approximately 10% of ICE US options volume, compared to more than 75% today - a strong validation signal that the physical trading floor was a waste of space. Mr Jackson previously championed mass adoption of Kiodex - an ASP-based commodities risk management platform for corporate hedgers owned by SunGard.

Secular Financial Technology Trends

A secular trend is one that is non-periodic and/or long-term in nature.

Cisco's 2007 Report on Trade Floor Architecture

Altho' it might seem a while back, Cisco's 2007 report still holds sway.  The report is called simply "Trade Floor Architecture" and is written by technical guys at Cisco including an architect specialising in the finance vertical (Mihael Risca, who also contributes to Cisco's Financial Services blog).

The report emphasises an effective trade floor architecture requires the best of both application and network domains. It also decodes certain cryptic industry terms such as CDP (continuous data replication) and KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) and FAST (FIX adapted for streaming). It subtly emphasises Cisco's role in the financial technology landscape.

One key component of Cisco's architecture diagram is the "ultra-low latency messaging" layer or "messaging bus" under which is labelled TIBCO RV and 29West (both of which are obsolescent, or at least have evolved into a different form). It summarises the messaging bus requirements touted by vendor 29West, namely: (1) lowest possible latency (e.g. <100 e.g.="e.g." load="load" micros="micros" stability="stability" under="under">1.4m msg/s), (3) control and flexibility (rate control and configurable transports).

29West  (owned by Informatica) supports AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) which is also being supported by JP Morgan and Cisco and Red Hat.

French QuantHouse Swallowed by McGraw-Hill

A French trading technology firm that "phoenix'ed" from the carcass of a failed hedge fund has been sold to McGraw-Hill. After two years of development, FIMAT (now known as Newedge following its merger with Calyon on 2 January, 2008) invested in the tech.Turnover is thought to be near 20 million euros. Clients are hi-frequency market makers and other low-latency junkies. FIXNETIX is a competitor.

London Stock Exchange Launches Millennium

Millennium Exchange is the LSE's new trading platform. The trading gateway is based on FIX 5.0. It also incorporates an FTP/SFTP reference data service which publishes data every trading day.