Electronic Trading Briefs

CyBerTrader Inc., the direct-access-brokerage subsidiary of The Charles Schwab Corporation, has teamed with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (CME), to provide direct order execution connectivity to the CME via the exchange's Globex electronic-trading-platform. Traders will have direct access to the CME's E-mini S&P 500 and E-mini Nasdaq-100 stock index contracts from their desktops.

FIX Protocol Limited and the Futures Industry Association (FIA) will sign a statement of understanding next Thursday, July 31, at the Bond Market Association offices in New York City, signifying that the two organizations agree to work together to ensure FIX Financial Information Exchange protocol is compliant with futures and options. This could pave the way for adoption of FIX as an industry-wide standard for the exchange-traded derivatives marketplace.

Axiom Global Trading competed the integration of its direct-access-trading functionality with TradingScreen's TradeSmart. The integrated platform provides TradingScreen clients with direct access to electronic communications networks (ECNs), the New York Stock Exchange and other primary and regional exchanges as well as Nasdaq market participants.

Schwab Capital Markets L.P. (SCM) named Wall Street veteran trader Bill McLaughlin as vice president of listed sales. McLaughlin came from Bear Stearns, where he was a senior managing director and head of listed sales.

Capitol Securities Management, a full-service broker-dealer headquartered in McLean, Va., selected U.S. Clearing, a division of Fleet Securities, Inc., for clearing and execution services. Capitol, with 158 investment advisors and more than $1 billion in assets, will use U.S. Clearing's Fundquest platform for their managed money groups. The broker/dealer evaluated five clearing firms, according to the news announcement.

Barclay's Capital and Bloomberg launched the first single-dealer online-platform for trading interest rate swaps across the Bloomberg Professional service. The new platform - targeted at professional investors - allows users to electronically trade on live Euro-interest rate swap prices subject to Barclay's Capital enabling the customer to trade with them.

Future Trade Technologies, based in Lake Forest, Calif., closed a $12.5 million Series C funding round led by Menlo Ventures. The FutureTrade platform was rolled out to hedge funds and asset managers in January 2002. Wall Street veteran Murray Finebaum is president and chief executive officer. Finebaum was the founder and CEO of Trading Edge, the first online trading platform for high-yield bonds, which was sold to MarketAxess.