Collins Stewart Boosts Trader Productivity, Meets MiFID Requirements with Fidessa

Collins Stewart, a leading UK independent investment banking group, has boosted trader productivity and accelerated execution of client orders through implementation of the full suite of Fidessa Advanced Trading Tools. Fast, automated execution also allows it to demonstrate best execution as required under the European Union’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID).

“The complexity of today’s trading environment calls for highly automated, reliable and efficient execution, and the increasing use of algorithmic strategies. Fidessa’s Advanced Trading Tools, which are fully integrated with our existing Fidessa OMS, enable us to execute client orders faster with minimal manual intervention, providing our customers with best execution, as required by MiFID,” says Peter Hall, head of IT and operations at Collins Stewart. “Thanks to Fidessa’s Advanced Trading Tools, we have increased trader productivity significantly, which has already enabled us to generate new client business.”

The full suite of Fidessa’s Advanced Trading Tools implemented by Collins Stewart includes List Management, Wave Trading, Pairs Trading and the BlueBox algorithmic trading engine. Fidessa List Management and Wave Trading enable Collins Stewart to trade large mixed baskets while consolidating all trades and performance data in real-time. Fidessa Pairs Trading is a set of trading strategies that takes advantage of merger and acquisition structures and market inefficiencies in order to obtain profit. Fidessa BlueBox gives Collins Stewart, a Fidessa hosted client since 2004, access to industry-standard, out-of-the-box algorithms, including VWAP, TWAP, Arrival Price and Percentage of Volume.

The Advanced Trading Tools suite is currently used by three members of Collins Stewart’s execution team, allowing them to handle a far greater number of client orders than before.

Fidessa is a Microsoft partner and its client applications have Windows GUIs developed using .NET, ActiveX and C++.

Julian Garcia-Santos, head of client marketing for hosted services at Fidessa in Europe, credited the combination of high performance, low-latency market data, global exchange connectivity, cost-effectiveness and easy deployment with contributing to new Advanced Trading Tools wins in the algorithmic trading space.