Trading Technologies Preps September OMS Launch

Chicago-based trading software vendor Trading Technologies (TT) is preparing to launch its new desktop integrated order management system (OMS) in September, featuring a range of new order handling tools and techniques for brokers that differentiate it from the vendor’s existing execution management system (EMS).

“The work we have done in the last couple of years is to build out some of the most advanced order handling features and functionality so that we can accommodate the most complex use cases and have an OMS product that can compete with any system out there today,” says Jason Shaffer, TT’s chief product officer.

New order handling features available in the OMS platform include bulking, stitching and splitting, allocations, and lock and release.

Bulking is when users combine multiple care orders for the same instrument and direction into one parent care order. Users can pick two or more care orders from the OMS’ order book display, and select “Bulk” from the context menu, or can simply drag and drop the orders onto each other to automatically bulk them together. Users can also select the entire order book and choose the “Combine” function from the same context menu. The platform then displays which orders can be bulked.

Stitching—where two different orders are intended to represent a spread—is most commonly used when rolling over positions, Shaffer says. Not all client systems can send the spread order, so they have to send the two outright leg orders. Stitching allows the user to take two orders, and stitch them together into a spread instrument, which the broker can execute on the exchange. Users of TT’s OMS will be able to stitch orders together that comprise exchange-listed spreads such as bundles, packs, strips, butterflies and calendars.

Splitting is similar to stitching in that the function combines multiple orders. The splitting feature can come into play when the quantities of two orders do not match up and cannot be stitched. Then users can split one order into two and stitch the quantities that match, using the remaining tails as a separate order. The TT OMS will display all possible combinations of orders that can be stitched.

The OMS also supports allocation methods such as average price, rotation of accounts, highest price to highest account number, and random allocation, and for the first time supports exchange drop copy messages for fills executed on other platforms.

TT announced plans to enter the full-featured OMS business in 2018—when it also announced plans to retire its X_Trader platform—and will deploy the features initially outlined to clients in September using a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model over TT’s global network. TT modified its EMS to create the new OMS. The OMS’ features and functionality are tightly integrated with the EMS, and are part of the same “ecosystem”, running on the same screen in the desktop. “We’ve moved our entire customer base on to a single platform, a single network,” Shaffer says. “Our OMS users will use the same screen to do the EMS execution. It’s one and the same.”

X_Trader had been installed at many different client sites around the world, but with no means of communication between them. “We’ve had people using X_Trader as their OMS for years. Those were users who didn’t require the most complex order handling features and functionality, and were mostly receiving customer flow and then going right to execution through our EMS,” Shaffer says, adding that by moving the entire TT customer base off those siloed networks and infrastructures onto a single network, traders and brokers can more easily connect with each other.