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Our Product Line
We are a securities industry technology solutions provider. Since we have been involved in the construction of trading businesses from top to bottom, we have a vast range of experience.
- Electronic trading systems
- Web based order management
- Smart order routing
- FIX connectivity
- CMS connectivity
- NASDAQ connectivity
- Secure internet communications
- Real-time databases
- Real-time market data feed management
- SQL database development
- System integration
- Complete internet solutions
- ACT reporting
- CTCI (Computer To Computer Interface)
Electronic Trading Systems
| The TickerSoft team has extensive experience building electronic trading engines. Electronic trading and matching systems generally have performance requirements that extend far beyond the reach of traditional software development methods. For this reason, real-time methods are usually required. This involves the use of memory resident databases, high speed message queues and the best use of the fastest software languages. |
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Our bench testing of production real-time trading systems over the years has shown that our real-time systems will generally outperform traditional systems by a factor of 3000 to 5000. If your trading systems only expects to receive 10 orders per second, then these methods may be over kill. However, if you are trading in a liquid market with low margins and your only hope for success is to handle big order flow, then real-time is a must.
The TickerSoft team has experience building real-time trading systems for listed securities, OTC national markets, OTC small caps, OTCBB (The Bulletin Board), stock options and international primary markets. We have built primary market systems, stand alone ATS systems and ECN systems with all of the NASDAQ bells and whistles. Our Open Systems approach will provide you with a product that is operating system independent and fully scalable. This will provide you with a business solution that can grow with your business and move from one OS to another.**
Our latest trading system was designed to trade Single Stock Futures. This derivative is the newest trading product available to the investor and is well suited for electronic trading. Our SSF system can run on hardware as small as a Linux PC and scale up to the largest UNIX box. The flexible component design allows us to quickly adapt the system to new rule changes faster then any competitor.
** OS portability has limits. Most of our systems will port easily between hardware that provides an ANCII C++ compiler. Some customization may be required if system calls change between machines. We have also had success porting systems between Microsoft NT® and UNIX platforms.
Order Management Systems
| The Ticker Soft team began developing Order Management Systems back in the green-screen days and lead the evolution from green-screen to Windows®, and then to the web. We can provide a custom Internet/Intranet based entry system for retail investors, active traders, professional traders, market makers or specialists. |
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Smart Order Routing
Smart order routing is essential in a fragmented trading environment. To get the best price for your order or your customer's order, a Smart Order Routing system is needed for price exploration and more. Best execution routing decisions should be made based on price, speed, size and the fees charged by each execution venue. Our routing software does all of this in real-time and we can quickly modify the core system to fit your specific business goals. |
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FIX connectivity
The Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol was developed in 1992 by a group of institutions and brokers interested in standardizing communications between financial institutions. Today, most major financial companies are using FIX, or are in the process of moving to FIX. |
FIX defines how systems will communicate between each other. Differing implementations of the protocol create incompatibilities resulting in integration problems. TickerSoft's FIX engine addresses these problems by providing a very flexible implementation with levels of validation configured by the user. The source code can also be customized to your particular implementation needs.
FIX implementations also differ in speed and performance. Our FIX engine is optimized for throughput, providing adequate performance even on scaled down hardware systems. A flexible and powerful application programming interface is also provided for easy integration into your other systems.
CMS connectivity
CMS is a legacy communications protocol that goes back to the earliest days of electronic trading. Although CMS is being replaced by FIX, many firms on the street have not yet adapted. If you need help supporting CMS, we can help.
NASDAQ connectivity
| We have the tools and experience to get you connected to Workstation II®, ACT (Automated Confirmation Transaction), SelectNet®, SuperSOES® and SuperMontage®. If NASDAQ does it, we can hook you in. |
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Secure internet communications
The use of the public network for business communications is growing rapidly since it is very inexpensive and most businesses are already connected. The only down side is the lack of security. Our secure TCP/IP servers use SSL and custom fire walls to insure that your data will be transferred safely. |
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Real-time databases
As the spreads in the market continue to compress and the margin per trade continues to drop, the only way a trading business can survive is to increase the number of trades. This puts considerable pressure on the trading systems. If the systems cannot handle the increased loads, then the business will suffer.
| No SQL database can achieve the transaction speeds that can be obtained using a memory resident database. Our bench tests show that our real-time relational database will out perform the best SQL database by a factor of 3000 to 5000. Since there is more to processing an order than the database calls, in practice, on productions trading systems we obtain a 1000 times boost in performance. On a machine where the SQL database can process 10 orders per second, ours will process 10,000. |
The SQL database has no advantage in the recovery department. When a memory resident database is combined with a high speed RAID, your data is fully recoverable in the event of a hardware crash.
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Real-time market data feed management
As trading volumes increase so do the demands on market data feed handlers. Ten years ago the NYSE was the biggest equities market trading around 150 million shares per day. Now NASDAQ is trading between 2 to 4 billion shares per day. This has increased the strain on market data handling applications by a factor of 20. Apps that needed to handle 1000 messages per second before, now need to process 20,000 per second. |
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The TickerSoft team has grown with the markets and we have the experience to handle today's market demands.
SQL database development
| SQL databases have their place in the trading room and on the electronic exchange floor. For handling customer accounts, historic data and non real-time transactions, a SQL database is the right tool for the job. |
We have worked closely with most major database systems including Oracle®, Sybase® and Microsoft SQL Server®. We have also built hybrids that combine the size benefits of an SQL database and the speed of a real-time db.
System integration
As systems get more and more complex, the process of integrating new products with legacy systems becomes increasingly complicated. Our seasoned developers began their careers back in the 1980s and have kept up with changing technologies. This depth of experience gives us the ability to easily link the new with the old to create a seamless product.
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Complete internet solutions
The TickerSoft team has experience in all facets of web and Internet development. From the basics of HTML to the complexities of dynamic web content, we can provide the right solution for your business. Our experience includes developing CGI (Common Gateway Interface) applications, Java applets and applications, ASP (Active Server Pages), connecting the web front-end to back-end databases and more. |
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We have even developed our own custom web servers to provide needed functionality missing in commercially available systems. Our web servers can provide secure access to real-time trading data for both internal market regulation needs and external market data dissemination.
ACT (Automated Confirmation Transaction)
| Reporting trades to NASDAQ can be a tricky business. There are many confusing rules and any mistake can cause a clearing nightmare. We have taken an ENC down this road before, so if you have ACT reporting needs, we can help. |
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CTCI (Computer To Computer Interface)
CTCI is a communications protocol that was used extensively before the rise of Internet protocols. We have experience connecting to CMS/CTCI brokerage firms as well as NASDAQ's systems such as SuperSoes, ACT and Workstation II. |
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