The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), and Lava Trading, the innovative technology firm that develops high-performance trading solutions for the financial services industry, today announced that CalPERS has selected the LavaFX product suite for foreign exchange trading.
CalPERS will use the platform to execute trades in its new Active Currency Overlay Portfolio, as well as in other internal portfolios.
Built upon Lava's leading, proprietary technology core, LavaFX provides a premier offering in electronic foreign exchange trading that is transforming the FX marketplace. It provides a Central Limit Order Book of live dealable prices, full price transparency and depth of book, and the ability to place bids and offers, together with Lava's sophisticated order types. The system aggregates multiple sources of FX liquidity into a single access point, which can be tapped via the fast, intuitive LavaFX user interface, or through a FIX API.
In September, Lava announced the addition of a significant new algorithmic trading feature to the LavaFX platform. It allows foreign exchange traders to execute orders over time, with minimal market notice or impact, by sending pieces of a master order into the market at specified intervals.
"We are very pleased to add LavaFX to CalPERS' order execution system," said Eric Busay, Portfolio Manager in Global Fixed Income, CalPERS. "With LavaFX, we'll be able to place standing orders, and importantly, time slice orders, as needed. By providing direct access to the foreign exchange markets, and allowing us to be a liquidity provider or price taker, we are confident Lava will result in improved FX trading; transforming those who require liquidity into liquidity providers."
"The Lava platform adds another dimension to our currency execution," adds Investment Officer Jonathon O'Donnell. "We execute FX trades for internal CalPERS' units as well as our passive and active currency overlay programs. Some orders come in with short notice. Lava will allow us to strategize, to focus on what needs to be done, when, in what currency and automate the process."
Omid Rezania, another member of the currency team who has been focusing on quantitative currency strategies has been keen on algorithmic strategies. "We expect Lava will be the platform that can respond to the highly time sensitive demands."
"We welcome CalPERS to the family of leading organizations using LavaFX," said David Ogg, CEO, LavaFX. "We expect CalPERS will realize significant benefit from the increased trading efficiency, greater pricing transparency and aggregation of disparate FX execution venues, LavaFX provides. In addition, our new algorithmic trading capabilities should prove especially useful, allowing CalPERS to move large orders through the market with minimal disruption."