Linedata Services wants to make it easier for buyside traders to send their orders to several execution venues simultaneously.
The vendor, which recently revamped its order management system, LongView, makes that possible by letting clients select their execution venues before they send their orders. The LongView Live vendor distribution tool lets the trader set up how he wants to break up and send an order, according to Dave Hagen, vice president of trading solutions at Linedata.
“It’s a gigantic time-saver,” Hagen said. “In today’s world, without a tool like that, most traders have to break out a calculator, split up the ticket six ways and place six broker placements.”
But LongView’s front-end order-routing technology treads onto turf traditionally occupied by execution management systems. Linedata is venturing there out of fear that some EMSs are encroaching on its own space: portfolio management and compliance functionality.
Up until this iteration of LongView, Linedata has done little in the execution space, one person familiar with the vendor said. Linedata’s current actions are consistent with those of other OMS vendors.
“All of them are interested in putting some functionality that gives traders better capabilities to manage their executions without actually having to stage the order into another system and then push it back.” the source said. “That’s something that they’re all trying to do.”
Using the distribution tool, a trader can break up, say, a one-million-share Citi buy order by pre-setting where and how chunks of the order execute through his favorite VWAP engine, through his direct market access channel, to one or more dark pools, ECNs or exchanges, or to one or more brokers’ desks. That breakdown can be one particular setting that he can re-use or share with other traders on his desk, Hagen said.
“I select my favorite venue setting with the percentages broken down, and I hit SEND,” he added. “It’s now two steps, down from, arguably, 40 or 50.”
