10:42 AM
Chi-X Europe Launches Chi-Velocity
Chi-X Europe has launched Chi-Velocity, a proximity-hosted risk management software layer co-located next to the Chi-X Europe primary matching engine that enables trading participant firms to offer ultra-low latency sponsored direct market access (DMA) to their clients.
“We first offered pure sponsored access to firms in October of 2008 and now we’re offering more pre-trade checks along with that access,” says Hirander Misra, chief operating officer at Chi-X Europe. “We’re reducing time to market and fulfilling the obligation of pre-trade controls mandated by regulators.”
Chi-Velocity offers a set of configurable pre-trade controls, open exposure risk management controls, alerting functionality and a FIX order and trade feed that can be integrated with in-house risk systems.
Clients can set a range of restrictions and controls including restricted stock lists, daily consideration and order limits and price range checking thresholds. Chi-X Europe trade participants license Chi-Velocity from Chi-X Europe and received dedicated software instances on servers managed and maintained by Chi-X Europe.
Misra says that about six prime brokerage firms are already beginning to offer the service to about 18 underlying customers. “The banks want more control over their trading and their software and they also want to save money,” he adds. “There is a big focus on risk and control right now…and the necessary checks need to be done as fast as possible. This is a solution with minimum overhead for those firms.”