Athena is Aegis' flagship Execution Management System (EMS) for global equities, futures, options and foreign exchange. Plimsoll is a United States-based alternative asset manager, active in currency management since 2002. Production deployment of Armada commenced this month.

AthenaTrader from Aegis includes several innovative facilities for one-click trading across the fragmented FX marketplace. Target positions can be staged in a shared blotter, for simultaneous handling by several traders on a desk. Dealable prices from several liquidity providers are displayed in a "montage," enabling traders to pinpoint the best price and to sweep the top of book across several ECNs in one operation. Additionally, the system enables clients to define and trade "synthetics," virtual instruments that are derived from other products. Using AthenaTrader, all capabilities can also be controlled in a programmatic fashion to support algorithmic trading.

Plimsoll's Armada High-Frequency Currency Program consists of a portfolio of non-correlated automated trading systems that are carefully designed to produce superior risk-adjusted returns in a variety of market conditions. Armada's underlying trading strategies combine non-linear predictive models with elements of market making and statistical arbitrage, to capitalize on small price fluctuations lasting only a few minutes, or perhaps even seconds, rather than longer-term price trends. All strategies are fully automated FX-specific execution algorithms, focusing on the highly liquid major currencies.

"In today's ultra-competitive marketplace, pricing and execution capabilities are as critical to the success of automated, high-frequency trading as the underlying statistical models that generate the trading signals," said Thomas Parry, Director of Algorithmic Trading at Plimsoll. "Athena provides the cutting edge technology that ensures our strategies have the fastest and most reliable access to their respective markets and liquidity sources."

"It's been highly rewarding to work with Plimsoll," said Norm Friedman, Vice President of Aegis Software. "The models are quite sophisticated and it's very gratifying to watch them utilize many of the advanced features built into Athena in order to achieve their goals."