Fixed income securities ratings visualization

• US 20040103050A1
• Filed: 11/25/2002
• Published: 05/27/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 02/14/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Multiple-Markets
• Original Assignee: Multiple-Markets
• Inventors: Long, Catherine C.
• Granted Patent: US 7,827,080 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/35
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/06 Asset management; Financial planning or analysis

Abstract

An arrangement is provided for enabling online retail fixed income. A fixed income online retail enabling mechanism analyzes a request received from a user to determine the requested operation related to online retail fixed income. If the request is for visualizing information related to securities in one or more fixed income capital markets, visual representations are constructed using color codes and real value ratings converted from corresponding ratings issued from different sources and presented to the user. If the request is for managing account information, the fixed income online retail enabling mechanism facilitates the needs of managing accounts. If the request is related to conducting a transaction related to fixed income securities, the fixed income online retail enabling mechanism performs operations to trade securities in one or more fixed income capital markets.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

receiving, by a fixed income online retail enabling mechanism, a request;

analyzing the request;

presenting information related to securities in one or more fixed income capital markets with visual representations constructed using color codes and real value ratings converted from corresponding ratings of the securities obtained from different sources, if the request inquiries the information;

managing account information associated with one or more accounts, if the request is for account management;

conducting a transaction in a fixed income capital market if the request corresponds to an order to trade securities in the fixed income capital market.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the request is received from a user.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the user includes at least one of:

a retail investor;

or

a retail investor representative.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein the request to perform account management is received from at least one of:

an administrator of the fixed income capital retail enabling mechanism;

or

a user.

5. The method according to claim 4, wherein the information inquired includes at least some of:

information related to offerings of securities in the one or more fixed income capital markets;

information related to market data associated with the bonds in the one or more fixed income capital markets; and

information related to the portfolio of the user.

6. The method according to claim 5, wherein the information related to the offerings of bonds includes at least one of:

daily offerings in the one or more fixed income capital markets; and

credit quality of one or more bonds in the one or more fixed income capital markets expressed as ratings.

7. The method according to claim 5, wherein the information inquired further includes at least one of:

current holdings in the portfolio of the user;

interest projection of a bond;

income and principal projection of a bond; and

default rate associated with a bond.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein said presenting comprises:

collecting the information related to one or more bonds in the fixed income capital markets;

obtaining the ratings associated with the one or more bonds from the differen sources, each of said ratings evaluating an associated bond;

converting the obtained ratings into one or more representations that characterize the credit quality of the associated bond;

organizing the information related to the bonds, the obtained ratings associated with the one or more bonds, and the one or more representations converted from the ratings to produce organized data; and

visualizing the organized data according to the request.

9. The method acording to claim 8, wherein the different sources correspond to at least one rating institutions.

10. The method according to claim 9, wherein each of the obtained ratings corresponds to a symbol that has an associated semantic meaning.

11. The method according to claim 8, wherein said one or more representations corresponding to each of the ratings include:

a color code encoding the credit quality of the corresponding bond implied by the asssociated rating in a visual manner; and

a real value encoding the credit quality of the corresponding bond implied by the associated rating in a numerical manner.

12. The method according to claim 11, wherein said converting comprises:

converting each of the ratings into a color code; and

converting each of the ratings into a real value.

13. The method according to claim 12, wherein said converting a rating into a color code comprises:

identifying the source from which the rating is obtained;

determining an entry in a first conversion table using the rating and the source of the rating; and

retrieving the color code stored at the entry of the first conversion table to produce the color code of the rating.

14. The method according to claim 13, further comprising establishing the first conversion table prior to said identifying, said first conversion table being constructed based on some mapping defined between a plurality of ratings from the different sources and a corresponding set of color codes.

15. The method according to claim 12, wherein said converting a rating into a color code comprises:

transforming the rating into a numerical value; and

computing the color code corresponding to the rating using a formula that uses the numerical value of the rating as an input and produces the color code as an output.

16. The method according to claim 12, wherein said converting a rating into a real value comprises:

identifying the source from which the rating is obtained;

determining an entry in a second conversion table using the rating and the source of the rating; and

retrieving a real value stored at the entry of the second conversion table to produce the real value corresponding to the rating.

17. The method according to claim 16, further comprising establishing the second conversion table prior to said identifying, said second conversion table being constructed based on some mapping defined between a plurality of ratings from the different sources and a corresponding set of real values defined within a range.

18. The method according to claim 12, wherein said converting a rating into a real value comprises:

transforming the rating into a numerical value; and

computing the real value corresponding to the rating using a formula which uses the numerical value of the rating as an input and produces the real value corresponding to the rating as an output.

19. The method according to claim 16, wherein said visualizing the organized data comprises:

analyzing a choice of the user in terms of desired visual presentation of the organized data; and

presenting the organized data in the desired visual presentation according to the user'"'"'s choice.

20. The method according to claim 19, wherein the choice of desired visual presentation includes at least one of:

visual presentation of information related to a plurality of fixed income securities; and

visual presentation of information with respect to a specific fixed income security.

21. The method according to claim 20, wherein the visual presentation related to a plurality of fixed income securities includes at least one of:

evaluation of daily offering of fixed income securities; and

current holdings of fixed income securities in a portfolio.

22. The method according to claim 20, wherein the presentation of information with respect to a specific fixed income securitity includes at least one of:

life cycle of the specific bond;

interest projection of the specific bond;

income and principal projection of the specific bond; and

default rate of the specific bond.

23. The method according to claim 1, wherein said managing account information associated with one or more accounts comprises:

adding a new account when a new user registers with the fixed income capital online retail enabling mechanism;

deleting an existing account previously registered with the fixed income capital online retail enabling mechanism;

updating an existing account corresponding to an existing user.

24. The method according to claim 23, wherein said adding an account comprises:

receiving information about the new user;

setting up a new account in an account database with the received information about the new user; and

creating, optionally, a portfolio corresponding to the new account for the new user.

25. The method according to claim 23, wherein said deleting an account comprises:

accessing the existing account previously registered; and

marking the existing account as deleted; and

transferring, optionally, assests associated with the deleted account.

26. The method according to claim 23, wherein said updating an account comprises:

receiving information to be used to update corresponding information in an existing account of an existing user;

accessing the existing account for which the corresponding information is to be updated using the information received;

updating the corresponding information of the existing account stored in an account database using the information received; and

changing, optionaly, the portfolio of the existing account according to the information received.

27. The method according to claim 1, wherein said conducting a transaction in a fixed income capital market comprises:

receiving an order from a user related to a transaction to trade fixed income securities in a fixed income market;

performing credit check with respect to the requested trade;

informing the counterparty involved in the transaction if the credit check is successful;

executing the order after said informing the counterparty of the trade;

confirming the trade after said executing the order;

clearing the trade after said confirming the trade;

completing the transaction after the trade is cleared;

updating the portfolio of the account associated with the user according to the trade after the transaction is successfully completed; and

reporting the transaction.

28. The method according to claim 27, wherein said reporting comprises at least one of:

reporting the transaction status to an authority if the transaction is sucessfully completed; and

reporting a status of aborted transaction to the user if the transaction is abandoned when the credit check with respct to the trade is unsatisfactory.

29. A system, comprising:

a fixed income online retail enabling mechanism capable of supporting information inquiry and fixed income securitiy transaction based on credit quality representations converted from at least one ratings issued by one or more rating institutions that evaluate bonds in one or more fixed income capital markets;

a user terminal capable of providing connection to the fixed income capital online retail enabling mechanism and transmitting requests to the fixed income online retail enabling mechanism and receiving replies generated by the fixed income online retail enabling mechanism in response to the requests; and

a graphical user interface capable of providing interaction means between the fixed income online retail enabling mechanism and the user terminal.

30. The system according to claim 29, wherein the user terminal is used by a user including at least one of:

a retail investor of fixed income securities;

or

a retail investor representative acting on behalf of at least one retail investor in trading fixed income securities.

31. The system according to claim 30, wherein the fixed income online retail enabling mechanism comprises:

a front-end engine connecting to the graphical user interface capable of driving the graphical user interface to facilitate interactions between the fixed income online retail enabling mechanism and the user;

a data collection and management mechanism capable of collecting relevant data from a plurality of sources and managing said data to facilitate the fixed income online retail;

an account management mechanism capable of managing accounts and associated portfolios of the users of the fixed income capital online retail enabling mechanism; and

a transaction processing mechanism capable of conducting transactions on behalf of the users in the one or more fixed income capital markets.

32. The system according to claim 31, wherein the data collection and management mechanism includes at least one of:

an offering management mechanism capable of gathering and managing information related to the bonds in the one or more fixed income capital markets;

a rating management mechanism capable of gathering and managing ratings related to the fixed income securities in the one or more fixed income capital markets issued by the at least one rating institutions; and

a market data management mechanism capable of gathering and managing market data related to the fixed income securities in the one or more fixed income capital markets.

33. The system according to claim 32, wherein the front-end engine comprises:

a rating conversion mechanism capable of converting each of the ratings obtained from the at least one rating institution into one or more representations that characterize the credit quality of the associated bond; and

a user interaction control mechanism capable of driving, via the graphical user interface, the interaction between the fixed income capital online retail enabling mechanism and the user and responding to the requests from the user.

34. The system according to claim 33, wherein the one or more representations of each of the ratings include at least one of:

a color code corresponding to a visual representation of a rating associated with a bond obtained from the at least one rating institution; and

a real value corresponding to a numerical representation of a rating associated with a bond obtained from the at least one rating institution.

35. The system according to claim 34, further comprising at least one conversion table describing relationships between the ratings from the at least one rating institution and the one or more representations characterizing the credit quality of fixed income securities.

36. The system according to claim 35, wherein the rating conversion mechanism comprises at least one of:

a color code conversion mechanism capable of converting a rating obtained from a rating institution to a color code corresponding to a visual representation of the obtained rating; and

a numeric rating conversion mechanism capable of converting a rating obtained from a rating institution to a real value corresponding to a numeric representation of the obtained rating.

37. A fixed income online retail enabling mechanism, comprising:

a front-end engine capable of driving a graphical user interface to facilitate interactions between the fixed income online retail enabling mechanism and a user terminal based on one or more credit quality representations converted from at least one ratings issued by one or more rating institutions that evaluate bonds in one or more fixed income capital markets;

a data collection and management mechanism capable of collecting relevant data from a plurality of sources and managing said data to facilitate the fixed income online retail;

an account management mechanism capable of managing accounts and associated portfolios of the accounts of the users of the fixed income capital online retail enabling mechanism; and

a transaction processing mechanism capable of conducting transactions on behalf of the users in the one or more fixed income capital markets.

38. The mechanism according to claim 37, wherein the data collection and management mechanism includes at least one of:

an offeing management mechanism capable of gathering and managing information related to the bonds in the one or more fixed income capital markets;

a rating management mechanism capable of gathering and managing the ratings related to the bonds in the one or more fixed income capital markets issued by the at least one rating institution; and

a market data management mechanism capable of gathering and managing market data related to the fixed income securities in the on or more fixed income capital markets.

39. The mechanism according to claim 38, wherein the front-end engine comprises:

a rating conversion mechanism capable of converting each of the ratings obtained from the at least one rating institution into one or more representations that characterize the credit quality of an associated bond; and

a user interaction control mechanism capable of driving the interaction between the fixed income capital online retail enabling mechanism and a user via the user terminal and responding to the requests from the user.

40. The mechanism according to claim 39, wherein the one or more representations include at least one of:

a color code corresponding to a visual representation of a rating associated with a bond obtained from the at least one rating institution; and

a real value corresponding to a numerical representation of a rating associated with a bond obtained from the at least one rating institution.

41. The mechanism according to claim 40, further comprising at least one conversion table describing relationships between the ratings from the at least one rating institution and the one or more representations characterizing the credit quality of associated bonds.

42. The mechanism according to claim 41, wherein the rating conversion mechanism comprises at least one of:

a color code conversion mechanism capable of converting a rating obtained from a rating institution to a color code corresponding to a visual representation of the obtained rating; and

a numeric rating conversion mechanism capable of converting a rating obtained from a rating institution to a real value corresponding to a numeric representation of the obtained rating.

43. The mechanism according to claim 42, wherein the user interaction control mechanism comprises:

a visualization mechanism capable of generating one or more visual presentations based on information related to fixed income securities using the one or more representations converted from the ratings associated with the bonds; and

an interactive interface driver capable of driving, via the graphical user interface, the interaction with the user using the one or more visual presentations and based on requests from the user issued through the graphical user interface.

44. The mechanism according to claim 43, wherein the visualization mechanism comprises at least some of:

a bond offering visualization constructor capable of generating a visual presentation of bond offerings using the one or more representations converted from the ratings associated with the bond offerings;

a life cycle visualization constructor capable of generating a visual presentation of the life cycle of a bond;

a portofolio holdings visualization constructor capable of generating a visual presentation of current bond holdings in the portofolio of a user based on the one or more representations converted from the ratings associated with the bonds in the portofolio;

an interest projection visualization constructor capable of generating a visual presentation of projected interest of a bond based on the one or more representations converted from the ratings associated with the bond;

an income and principal projection visualization constructor capable of generating a visual presentation of projected income and principal of a bond based on the one or more representations converted from the ratings associated with the bond; and

a default rate visualization constructor capable of generating a visual presentation of default rate of a bond based on one or more representations converted from the ratings associated with the bond.

45. The mechanism according to claim 38, wherein the offering management mechanism comprises:

a daily offering inquiry mechanism capable of sending requests for information related to inventory of the one or more fixed income capital markets and receiving the requested inventory information;

an offering data analysis mechanism capable of analyzing the data received by the daily inventory inquiry mechanism and the historical data inquiry mechanism to generate analytical data associated with the bonds in the one or more fixed income capital markets; and

an offering database management mechanism capable of managing an inventory database to facilitate storage and retrieval of inventory related data.

46. The mechanism according to claim 38, wherein the rating management mechanism comprises:

at least one rating collection agent capable of obtaining ratings assocaited with fixed income securities from the one or more rating institutions; and

a rating database management mechanism capable of managing a rating database to facilitate storage and retrieval of rating related information.

47. The mechanism according to claim 37, wherein the account management mechanism comprises:

an account registration mechanism capable of registering a user with the fixed income capital online retail enabling mechanism;

an account update mechanism capable of updating information in an existing account associated with a user; and

a portfolio management mechanism capable of managing a portfolio associated with an account of a user.

48. The mechanism according to claim 37, wherein the transaction management mechanism comprises:

an order processing mechanism capable of processing an order from a user related to a transaction to trade bonds in the one or more fixed income capital markets;

a transaction engine capable of completing the transaction;

an account update mechanism capable of updating the portfolio of the account associated with the user isssuing the order to complate the transaction; and

a transaction reporting mechaism capable of reporting the status of the transaction.

49. An article comprising a storage medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by a machine, result in the following:

receiving, by a fixed income online retail enabling mechanism, a request;

analyzing the request;

presenting information related to securities in one or more fixed income capital markets with visual representations constructed using color codes and real value ratings converted from corresponding ratings of the securities obtained from different sources, if the request inquiries the information;

managing account information associated with one or more accounts, if the request is for account management;

conducting a transaction in a fixed income capital market if the request corresponds to an order to trade securities in the fixed income capital market.

50. The article according to claim 49, wherein the request is received from a user.

51. The article according to claim 50, wherein the user includes at least one of:

a retail investor;

or

a retail investor representative.

52. The article according to claim 51, wherein the request to perform account management is received from at least one of:

an administrator of the fixed income capital retail enabling mechanism;

or

a user.

53. The article according to claim 52, wherein the information inquired includes at least some of:

information related to offerings of securities in the one or more fixed income capital markets;

information related to market data associated with the bonds in the one or more fixed income capital markets; and

information related to the portfolio of the user.

54. The article according to claim 53, wherein the information related to the offerings of bonds includes at least one of:

daily offerings in the one or more fixed income capital markets; and

credit quality of one or more bonds in the one or more fixed income capital markets expressed as ratings.

55. The article according to claim 53, wherein the information inquired further includes at least one of:

current holdings in the portfolio of the user;

interest projection of a bond;

income and principal projection of a bond; and

default rate of a bond.

56. The article according to claim 55, wherein said presenting comprises:

collecting the information related to one or more bonds in the fixed income capital markets;

obtaining the ratings associated with the one or more bonds from the different sources, each of said ratings evaluating an associated bond;

converting the obtained ratings into one or more representations that characterize the credit quality of the associated bond;

organizing the information related to the bonds, the obtained ratings associated with the one or more bonds, and the one or more representations converted from the ratings to produce organized data; and

visualizing the organized data according to the request.

57. The article acording to claim 56, wherein the different sources correspond to at least one rating institutions.

58. The article according to claim 57, wherein each of the obtained ratings corresponds to a symbol that has an associated semantic meaning.

59. The article according to claim 56, wherein said one or more representations corresponding to each of the ratings include:

a color code encoding the credit quality of the corresponding bond implied by the asssociated rating in a visual manner; and

a real value encoding the credit quality of the corresponding bond implied by the associated rating in a numerical manner.

60. The article according to claim 59, wherein said converting comprises:

converting each of the ratings into a color code; and

converting each of the ratings into a real value.

61. The article according to claim 60, wherein said converting a rating into a color code comprises:

identifying the source from which the rating is obtained;

determining an entry in a first conversion table using the rating and the source of the rating; and

retrieving the color code stored at the entry of the first conversion table to produce the color code of the rating.

62. The article comprising a storage medium having stored thereon instructions acording to claim 61, the instructions, when executed by the machine, further result in establishing the first conversion table prior to said identifying, said first conversion table being constructed based on some mapping defined between a plurality of ratings from the different sources and a corresponding set of color codes.

63. The article according to claim 60, wherein said converting a rating into a color code comprises:

transforming the rating into a numerical value; and

computing the color code corresponding to the rating using a formula that uses the numerical value of the rating as an input and produces the color code as an output.

64. The article according to claim 60, wherein said converting a rating into a real value comprises:

identifying the source from which the rating is obtained;

determining an entry in a second conversion table using the rating and the source of the rating; and

retrieving a real value stored at the entry of the second conversion table to produce the real value corresponding to the rating.

65. The article comprising a storage medium having stored thereon instructions acording to claim 64, the instructions, when executed by the machine, further result in establishing the second conversion table prior to said identifying, said second conversion table being constructed based on some mapping defined between a plurality of ratings from the different sources and a corresponding set of real values defined within a range.

66. The article according to claim 60, wherein said converting a rating into a real value comprises:

transforming the rating into a numerical value; and

computing the real value corresponding to the rating using a formula which uses the numerical value of the rating as an input and produces the real value corresponding to the rating as an output.

67. The article according to claim 60, wherein said visualizing the organized data comprises:

analyzing a choice of the user in terms of desired visual presentation of the organized data; and

presenting the organized data in the desired visual presentation according to the user'"'"'s choice.

68. The article according to claim 67, wherein the choice of desired visual presentation includes at least one of:

visual presentation of information related to a plurality of fixed income securities; and

visual presentation of information with respect to a specific fixed income security.

69. The article according to claim 68, wherein the visual presentation related to a plurality of fixed income securities includes at least one of:

evaluation of daily offering of fixed income securities; and

current holdings of fixed income securities in a portfolio.

70. The article according to claim 68, wherein the presentation of information with respect to a specific fixed income security includes at least one of:

life cycle of the specific bond.

interest projection of the specific bond;

income and principal projection of the specific bond; and

default rate of the specific bond.

71. The article according to claim 49, wherein said managing account information associated with one or more accounts comprises:

adding a new account when a new user registers with the fixed income capital online retail enabling mechanism;

deleting an existing account previously registered with the fixed income capital online retail enabling mechanism;

updating an existing account corresponding to an existing user.

72. The article according to claim 71, wherein said adding an account comprises:

receiving information about the new user;

setting up a new account in an account database with the received information about the new user; and

creating, optionally, a portfolio corresponding to the new account for the new user.

73. The article according to claim 71, wherein said deleting an account comprises:

accessing the existing account previously registered; and

marking the existing account as deleted; and

transferring, optionally, assests associated with the deleted account.

74. The article according to claim 71, wherein said updating an account comprises:

receiving information to be used to update corresponding information in an existing account of an existing user;

accessing the existing account for which the corresponding information is to be updated using the information received;

updating the corresponding information of the existing account stored in an account database using the information received; and

changing, optionaly, the portfolio of the existing account according to the information received.

75. The article according to claim 49, wherein said conducting a transaction in a fixed income capital market comprises:

receiving an order from a user related to a transaction to trade fixed income securities in a fixed income market;

performing credit check with respect to the requested trade;

informing the counterparty involved in the transaction if the credit check is successful;

executing the order after said informing the counterparty of the trade;

confirming the trade after said executing the order;

clearing the trade after said confirming the trade;

completing the transaction after the trade is cleared;

updating the portfolio of the account associated with the user according to the trade after the transaction is successfully completed; and

reporting the transaction.

76. The article according to claim 75, wherein said reporting comprises at least one of:

reporting the transaction status to a regulartory authority if the transaction is sucessfully completed; and

reporting a status of aborted transaction to the user if the transaction is abandoned when the credit check with respct to the trade is unsatisfactory.