Electronic trading system for forwards spread trades

• US 7,685,048 B1
• Filed: 05/30/2000
• Issued: 03/23/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/01/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Bloomberg LP
• Original Assignee: Bloomberg LP
• Inventors: Tannenbaum, Karen D., Sansone, Ray, Houchen, Allyson, Hausman, Andrew
• Primary Examiner(s): Subramanian; Narayanswamy
• Assistant Examiner(s): Robinson; Kito R
• Application Number:
  US09/584,045
• Time in Patent Office: 3,584 Days
• Field of Search: 705/37, 705/80, 705/26, 705/54
• US Class Current: 705/37
• 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

Abstract

A trading system and method for trading forwards among a plurality of parties is presented. Among the features that the system implements are the following: counterparty enablement by forward term and/or region; a user selectable area on the monitor for executing again a trade that was just executed; a sweep trading feature for permitting a trader to sequentially aggress on a series of orders in the same forward; a spread-trading feature for allowing traders to directly trade on the difference between bid prices and offer prices for corresponding orders on a primary and secondary leg/link; providing a feature for joining orders wherein a trader may add a new bid or offer that has the same terms (e.g., price and quantity) of a perceived market best bid or offer; and enabling a party to make multiple bids and offers for the same forward within the same term at varying pricing.

Claims

1. A trading system for trading forwards between parties, the system comprising:

at least one trade execution computer capable of executing forwards trades from forwards orders in the trading system, the at least one trade execution computer communicating with a plurality of user stations over a communications network; and

a computer readable medium which stores computer programming executed by the at least one trade execution computer to cause the at least one trade execution computer to carry out a method for executing a forwards spread trade from the forwards orders in the trading system comprising a first leg forwards trade and a second leg forwards trade, and a price spread comprising the difference between prices of the first and second leg forwards trades, the at least one trade execution computer at least;

automatically generating from the forwards orders in the trading system one of (a) a forwards spread order including a spread price representing a difference between prices of potential first and second leg forwards trades and (b) an order relating to one of the first and second leg forwards trades and a forwards spread order;

the automatically-generated order not being initiated by a user station;

providing the automatically-generated order to the user stations; and

in response to a request from a user station to execute the automatically-generated order, executing the forwards spread trade including executing the first leg forwards trade at the first price and the second leg forwards trade at the second price, thereby providing the price spread between the first and second prices of the first leg and second leg forwards trades, respectively.

2. A method for trading forwards between parties in a trading system which comprises at least one trade execution computer capable of executing forwards trades including forwards spread trades, the at least one trade execution computer communicating with a plurality of user stations over a communications network, the forwards spread trades comprising a first leg forwards trade, a second leg forwards trade, and a price spread comprising the difference between the prices of the first and second leg forwards trades, the method comprising:

from forwards orders stored in the trading system, the at least one trade execution computer automatically generating one of (a) a forwards spread order including a spread price representing a difference between prices of potential first and second leg forwards trades and (b) an order relating to one of the first and second leg forwards and (b) a forwards spread order;

the automatically-generated order not being initiated by a user station;

the at least one trade execution computer providing the automatically-generated order to the user stations;

in response to a request from a user station to execute the automatically-generated order, the at least one trade execution computer executing the forwards spread trade including executing the first leg forwards trade at the first price and the second leg forwards trade at the second price, thereby providing the price spread between the first and second prices of the first leg and second leg forwards trades, respectively.