ChartIQ Rolls Out ‘Glue’ to Build Trading Terminal

It provides user experience application programming interfaces (APIs), drop-in components and the ability to integrate legacy .NET and Java applications alongside HTML5. Finsemble, which is built on top of OpenFin’s common operating layer, is designed to allow users to create their own trading terminals or platforms using ChartIQ applications or, if they prefer, their own internal apps or tools provided by third-party providers, Dan Schleifer, co-founder and CEO of ChartIQ, tells WatersTechnology.

“All that glue that makes everything inside a Bloomberg terminal work perfectly well with everything else—that’s what this is,” he says. “It’s the framework to build your own terminal or trading platform.”

Finsemble provides window and workspace management, snapping and docking, component linking, event routing, sharing storage and authentication, and data feed management. Schleifer says a handful of tier-1 banks, large hedge funds and financial technology companies participated in a six- to eight-week beta with Finsemble prior to launch.

Using traditional HTML5-built browser apps, tabs don’t talk to each other. They are not linked, so it isn’t possible to drag and drop. Using Finsemble, by simply clicking a “linking” icon, apps—for example, for financials, balance sheet metrics, cash flow, news feeds, and company overviews—can communicate together. When one app is updated, the other apps will be updated accordingly.

If a user is using a ChartIQ chart—or a chart from another provider—a high-performance blotter from another company, a transaction-cost analysis (TCA) tool from yet another provider, and, say, Symphony’s chat component, all of these apps can be linked together to create the feel of a single, interlinked product using Finsemble as the shell that holds everything together.

“Finsemble is the glue that connects all these things together. It allows them to talk together, link together and be organized into workspaces and workflows. It allows you to take your own applications and third-party applications and put them into one container,” Schleifer says. “All windows talk to each other, just like in a Bloomberg terminal or Thomson Reuters’ Eikon platform.”