System and Method for the Automated Brokerage of Financial Instruments

• US 20090187502A1
• Filed: 03/26/2009
• Published: 07/23/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/22/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Scottrade Incorporated (Charles Schwab Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Scottrade Incorporated (Charles Schwab Corporation)
• Inventors: Tully, Michael James, Scott, Virgil Michael
• Granted Patent: US 8,756,130 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 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/06 Asset management; Financial planning or analysis

Abstract

Disclosed herein in a preferred embodiment is an automated financial instrument brokerage system wherein a front end layer interacts with customers to generate activity requests for an intermediate layer. The intermediate layer preferably processes the activity requests and places financial instrument orders on a financial market if appropriate. A backend layer preferably provides data to the intermediate layer for processing activity requests. Multiple heterogeneous front end customer applications may be supported by the same intermediate layer. Further, multiple backend layer applications may interact with the intermediate layer in a manner transparent to the front end layer. Further, scalability can be achieved be partitioning various tasks of the intermediate layer onto separate servers, and more preferably on separate redundant servers. Load balancers may then be used in the intermediate layer to provide distributed access to these servers. Also disclosed herein is a caching technique whereby turnaround time for processing activity requests can be reduced by reducing the number of times that the intermediate layer needs to interact with the backend layer.

Claims

1. In an automated financial instrument brokerage system comprising a backend quote data source for obtaining financial instrument quote data and a server for processing quote activity requests, a method comprising:

maintaining a memory that is resident in the server;

storing quote data retrieved from the backend quote data source in the resident memory; and

determining, according to predetermined usage rules, whether to use the quote data stored in the resident memory when processing quote activity requests.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the resident memory is an application-in-memory cache.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising:

if the determining step results in a determination to use the quote data stored in the cache memory when processing a quote activity request, processing that quote activity request using the quote data stored in the cache memory; and

if the determining step results in a determination to not use the quote data stored in the cache memory when processing a quote activity request, processing that quote activity request using quote data to be obtained from the backend quote data source.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the storing step comprises:

storing quote data in the cache memory for a limited duration after that data has been obtained from the backend quote data source.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the quote activity request is a request by a user to view quote data for a particular financial instrument.

6. The method of claim 3 wherein the quote activity request is a request from another server in the system that needs quote data for a financial instrument in order to process an order activity request related to that financial instrument.

7. The method of claim 3 wherein the predetermined usage rules include a rule that the quote data stored in the cache memory is not to be used when processing a quote activity request if that quote data has been stored in the cache memory for longer than a predetermined length of time.

8. A method of obtaining quote data from at least one quote vendor for a financial instrument brokerage system, the system comprising at least one server configured to utilize quote data when processing an activity request related to one or more financial instruments, the method comprising:

receiving quote data from a quote vendor in a first data format;

converting the received quote data to a second data format; and

providing the second format quote data to the at least one server for use when processing the activity request.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising:

receiving quote data from a different quote vendor in a third data format;

converting the third format quote data to the second data format; and

wherein the providing step comprises providing the second format quote data from either of the two quote vendors to the at least one server for use when processing the activity request.

10. The method of claim 8 further comprising:

detecting a failure in connection with receiving quote data from the quote vendor;

selecting a different quote vendor from which to receive quote data;

receiving quote data from the different quote vendor in a third data format;

converting the third format quote data to the second data format; and

providing the second format quote data from the different quote vendor to the at least one server for use when processing the activity request.

11. A method of obtaining quote data from multiple quote vendors for a financial instrument brokerage system, the system comprising at least one server configured to utilize quote data when processing an activity request related to one or more financial instruments, the method comprising:

receiving quote data from a plurality of quote vendors, wherein at least two of the plurality of quote vendors use different data formats for the quote data;

converting the receiving quote data to a common data format; and

providing the common format quote data to the at least one server for use when processing a customer'"'"'s activity request.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the receiving step comprises:

receiving quote data from a first quote vendor in a first quote data format at a given time; and

receiving quote data from a second quote vendor in a second quote data format at a different given time.

13. The method of claim 11 further comprising:

selecting different quote vendors for providing quote data, wherein at least one quote vendor is to provide quote data of a first type and wherein at least one different quote vendor is to provide quote data of a second type.