The ground-breaking model provides traders with 'industrial strength' execution of any complex basket of securities and currencies, controlled directly from Microsoft Excel.

OptimEx gives traders the ability to construct multi-faceted models, each with up to 100 legs, in far less time than is possible using the tools offered by other main providers (e.g. Portware, FlexTrade, etc). Traders benefit from an additional competitive edge through an ability to include their own proprietary formulae and data into the model, something that is not typically possible with 'black box' solutions or with brokers' algorithms.

As with other AlgoTrader systems, OptimEx is offered to clients free of charge (fully inclusive of installation and training), which means that the sole cost is volume-related commission.

As Simon D. Bell, MD of AlgoTrader explained, this unconventional charging philosophy brings major benefits to clients: "Our aim is to get the maximum number of traders enjoying the benefits of OptimEx and we believe the best way of achieving this is to do away with the usual prohibitive set-up costs which can be so off-putting when trying out a new trading approach What this means is that traders can give us a try without any financial commitment whatsoever and we've got sufficient confidence in our offering to know that, once tried, we'll prove a hard habit to break!"

OptimEx's other key competitive advantage comes in the form of unrivalled ease of use, resulting from its tight integration with traders' favourite desktop tool, Microsoft Excel. This means that traders can focus on what they do best without having to adopt the complex proprietary programming languages used by other providers.

Bell concluded: "Traders find it very easy to get to grips with our Excel-based user interface and program it themselves. And sitting underneath the Excel user interface is a powerful C++ infrastructure, which ensures the system meets clients' highest expectations in terms of performance and reliability. We have more than four years of production operation, with more than one million orders routed to the markets."

OptimEx can connect to a client's preferred broker or they can use Man Financial or Lehman, AlgoTrader's approved broker partners.