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Trade Support
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| History |
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A top bracket Investment Bank that is
positioned as a principal issuer of High-Yield Bonds world wide sought
our expertise in designing and implementing a high-performance trade
support system for their most lucrative business unit, the High-Yield
Bond Trading Desk. The firm knew us from previous successful
engagements involving their trading and sales operations.
The
High-Yield Bond Desk Trade Support and Reporting System was designed to
eliminate volume sensitivity from the trading, trade management, and
trade support functions. With revenues frequently spiking to $1 million
dollars a day and beyond, the volume of transactions was overwhelming
the ability of the traders, their managers, and the support staff to
keep up. There was persistent concern that the desk might go into the
next trading day without all the position and profit and loss (P&L)
data from the previous day being fully reconciled.
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| Results |
DSI designed and installed a system to
capture the data and automate the processes that the desk depended
upon. The system captures transactions in real time from different
trade-input systems. It simultaneously captures real-time updates to
produce master and customer name-and-address tables. It uses this
information, both indicative and quantitative, to validate transactions
as they flow to the system, alerting support staff if there is an error
in the message, and providing a means to correct a transaction on the
fly.
As the transaction enters the database, the application
performs yield calculations and P&L calculations, both realized and
unrealized, to reflect accurately the status of the transaction from a
revenue and risk perspective. Each time a transaction enters a trader's
account, and each time a trader marks a position to market, the same
calculations are performed. The application keeps the trader's
positions continually in synch for trading, as well as for intra-day
and end of day status reports for management. Results from operations
worldwide are retrievable from a single database.
The front-end
GUI application is developed in PowerBuilder, Microsoft Visual C++, and
Java. PowerBuilder is an object-oriented software tool; Microsoft
Visual C++ is used primarily in the stored procedures; Java is used for
communications with the other systems. The relational database is
Microsoft SQL Server running on Microsoft NT for Servers.
- The application allows traders, managers, and support staff to take "$1 million days" in stride.
- DSI's choice of tools and platform
allow the firm simultaneously to reduce risk and to manage costs by
empowering the staff to work more accurately and quickly without
increasing headcount.
- The application permits timely and
accurate reporting for management as well as for trading and sales
staffs at a time when High-Yield Bonds have become internationalized,
raising both the volume and the risk.
- Trading operations on three continents are linked by the application over the Bank's internal network.
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Technology 