News Archive

29 April 2008

Cicada and Quod Financial Announce Alliance

The firms are combining the benefits of their technologies and services to offer a cost effective, low latency solution encompassing data infrastructure, order routing, trading and execution

23 April 2008 - London – Quod Financial and Cicada have formed an industry-leading alliance to deliver the market’s most comprehensive, integrated suite of technologies and services for algorithmic trading.

The offering is designed to address the increasing challenges and costs of conducting algo trading in Europe since MiFID implementation, including acquiring and maintaining the required infrastructure and systems, as well as accessing disparate pools of liquidity for a single instrument.

Liquidity fragmentation requires algo engines to search across multiple venues and process vast amounts of data instantaneously, to identify best execution opportunities and fill large orders. The technical and operational challenges are expected to grow as new venues are launched. The new combined solution offers the convenience, functionality and performance of Cicada’s MarketPrizm algo trading infrastructure and Quod Financial’s Advanced Execution Platform, coupled with Quod’s Advanced Smart Order Routing (ASOR) and Algo Trading modules.

Specifically, the solution comprises these MarketPrizm integrated technology and services components: DataPrizm to acquire and filter all required market data; PrizmBook to aggregate orders for an instrument across multiple trading venues into a single composite; and TradingPrizm, powered by Quod Financial, to provide high-speed execution of client algorithms and Smart Order Routing. The solution has flexible options for deployment, including a unique hosted and managed service, in which the client can take advantage of fast access through proximity to the venue and avoid the overhead and cost of directly managing the data, systems and network.

The alliance offers distinct advantages for clients by leveraging the proven technologies of two innovative industry leaders. Cicada is a long-established provider of real-time and reference data technology for major exchanges, financial institutions and data vendors. With this technology foundation, Cicada’s MarketPrizm provides the speed, reliability and the functionality to optimise algo trading and help control the rising cost of conducting trading in today’s fragmented markets.

Built on a low latency, high performance infrastructure, Quod ASOR’s combination of algorithms and trading-specific Complex Event Processing (CEP) dynamically adjusts the execution pattern of an order against the client’s individual best execution criteria. Quod ASOR is live and proven with leading international brokers, and is one of a number of advanced execution modules built upon the Quod Financial Advanced Execution platform.

“Our underlying technologies have enabled us to create an industry first, that can not only route to transparent liquidity, but locate and even predict dark liquidity. As the markets become increasingly fragmented and liquidity increasingly resides in dark pools, this is an essential tool for modern trading no matter which side of the market you sit,” said Ali Pichvai, CEO and co-founder of Quod Financial. “Integrating this functionality with Cicada’s MarketPrizm provides traders with a powerful, costeffective option for dealing with all aspects of algo trading.”

“This alliance offers algo traders a complete solution for the entire algo trading cycle: from the infrastructure to gather and process the data needed to drive their algorithms, to a complete view of the market across venues, to cost-effective hosting and proximity options, and through to order routing and execution, added Gregory Smith, Cicada’s CEO. “We look forward to enabling clients’ algo trading strategies through this uniquely comprehensive solution.”

In addition to the hosted, managed deployment option, clients can also obtain their own rack space at the venue and take advantage of support and monitoring services, or the solution can be deployed at another location or data centre selected by the client.

Contacts:

Laura Perdue
Cicada Companies
Tel: +1 972 385 9658
Mob: +1 972 740 8652

Andy Menzies
Quod Financial
Tel: +44 7949 520333
andy@quodfinancial.com

About Cicada – www.cicadacorp.com

Cicada is an innovative leader in data management and compliance technology for financial institutions, exchanges and data vendors. Cicada’s products address a range of today’s most pressing industry challenges: market and reference data management, multi-venue algo trading data integration and infrastructure, counterparty data management, client on-boarding and KYC compliance. The technology foundation for the company’s solutions is the Cicada Composer data management platform, which provides a component-based infrastructure for all financial data management processes, activities and workflows. In addition to the Composer data management infrastructure, Cicada offers specialized solutions including its Cicada Profiler software for KYC data compliance, and MarketPrizm, the company’s algo trading data and order book infrastructure.

About Quod Financial – www.quodfinancial.com

Quod Financial is a leading advanced execution technology provider for the global capital markets. Incorporating solutions for exchanges, liquidity venues, sell-side and buy-side institutions. The Advanced Execution Platform and Application Modules enable our clients to comprehensively address liquidity fragmentation, rapidly changing trading and execution algorithms, and multi-asset and complex cross-asset trading. The core execution services are complemented by Quod Financial’s smart-order routing, cross-asset trading, crossing and liquidity management, real-time pre-trade risk management, pre- and post-trade reporting and compliance services.

Quod Financial’s innovative approach is based on an open service-oriented architecture, leveraging our trading-specific complex-event processing technology, and our core algorithmic research lab which releases new tailor-able execution algorithms as the market evolves. This provides our clients with a flexible, powerful, and efficient environment to support multi-listed and cross-asset execution. Quod Financial is a proven solution with a global client base, and a team with over 100 years’ of collective market experience in leading European and US trading houses.

Quod Financial is an independent private company with offices in London and Paris.