Impact of Electronic Trading

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  • Reduced cost of transactions – By automating as much of the process as possible (often referred to as "straight-through processing" or STP), costs are brought down. The goal is to reduce the incremental cost of trades as close to zero as possible, so that increased trading volumes don't lead to significantly increased costs. This has translated to lower costs for investors.
  • Greater liquidity – electronic systems make it easier to allow different companies to trade with one another, no matter where they are located. This leads to greater liquidity (i.e. there are more buyers and sellers) which increases the efficiency of the markets.
  • Greater competition – While electronic trading hasn't necessarily lowered the cost of entry to the financial services industry, it has removed barriers within the industry and had a globalisation-style competition effect. For example, a trader can trade futures on Eurex, Globex or LIFFE at the click of a button – he or she doesn't need to go through a broker or pass orders to a trader on the exchange floor.
  • Increased transparency – Electronic trading has meant that the markets are less opaque. It's easier to find out the price of securities when that information is flowing around the world electronically.
  • Tighter spreads – The "spread" on an instrument is the difference between the best buying and selling prices being quoted; it represents the profit being made by the market makers. The increased liquidity, competition and transparency means that spreads have tightened, especially for commoditised, exchange-traded instruments.
Technology and systems
  • an exchange-provided GUI, which the trader runs on his or her desktop and connects directly to the exchange/ECN, and
  • an API which allows dealers to plug their own in-house systems directly into the exchange/ECN's.

For retail investors, financial services on the web offer great benefits. The primary benefit is the reduced cost of transactions for all concerned as well as the ease and the convenience. Web-driven financial transactions bypass traditional hurdles such as logistics.

Electronic trading systems are typically proprietary software (etrading platforms or electronic trading platforms), running on COTS hardware and operating systems, often using common underlying protocols, such as TCP/IP.
Exchanges typically develop their own systems (sometimes referred to as matching engines), although sometimes an exchange will use another exchange's technology (e.g. e-cbot, the Chicago Board of Trade's electronic trading platform, uses LIFFE's Connect system), and some newer electronic exchanges use 3rd-party specialist software providers (e.g. the Budapest stock exchange and the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange use automated trading system originally written and implemented by FMSC, an Australian technology company that was acquired by Computershare, and whose intellectual property rights are now owned by OMX).
Exchanges and ECNs generally offer two methods of accessing their systems –
From an infrastructure point of view, most exchanges will provide "gateways" which sit on a company's network, acting in a manner similar to a proxy, connecting back to the exchange's central system.
ECNs will generally forego the gateway/proxy, and their GUI or the API will connect directly to a central system, across a leased line.
Many brokers develop their own systems, although there are some third-party solutions providers specializing in this area. Like ECNs, brokers will often offer both a GUI and an API (although it's likely that a slightly smaller proportion of brokers offer an API, as compared with ECNs), and connectivity is typically direct to the broker's systems, rather than through a gateway.
Investment banks and other dealers have far more complex technology requirements, as they have to interface with multiple exchanges, brokers and multi-dealer platforms, as well as their own pricing, P&L, trade processing and position-keeping systems. Some banks will develop their own electronic trading systems in-house, but this can be costly, especially when they need to connect to many exchanges, ECNs and brokers. There are a number of companies offering solutions in this area.

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