Data volumes are exploding on Wall Street, with analysts forecasting equity options volume, for example, doubling annually in 2009 and 2010, and in return driving increased demand for automated trading platforms to help manage the volume. A recent survey by the TABB Group, a financial services market research firm, shows nearly half of the buy side considering a change in execution management system (EMS) this year, citing a desire to consolidate, integrate, customize, improve technology and lower costs.

"With market data volumes exploding, automated algorithmic trading is becoming more prevalent on the buy side and across more asset classes, not just equities," said Graham Miller, CEO of Marketcetera. "This environment places tremendous pressure on investment firms to continue to make fast, intelligent trading decisions at ever lower costs per transaction. With the release of Marketcetera Version 1.5 and the benefits of our open architecture and powerful strategy research and development environment, we're fundamentally changing how traders can successfully meet these new challenges."

The Marketcetera Trading Platform's open and modular architecture designed to facilitate rapid deployment and ease of extension. Rich APIs including a built-in scripting engine, make it easy to extend the functionality of the Marketcetera Platform. Internal teams can develop custom pricing and risk modules quickly. Complex new trading strategies can be tested and implemented in minutes. And a foundation of open source technologies such as QuickFIX and Esper provide the performance of proprietary packages with the flexibility of the custom solution.

The major added new features in Marketcetera Platform Version 1.5 include:

1. Real-time intraday position and profit and loss monitoring. The Marketcetera Platform desktop application, Strategy Studio, now supports real-time intraday position and profit and loss tracking and management on all traddes around the clock.
2. Simplicity and security for multi-user installations. Building on the existing authentication framework, the Marketcetera Platform now provides segregation of trading activities and strategies for traders and supervisors or risk managers.
3. Level 2 and depth-of-book market data. Get more than just the best bid and offer. With added support for NASDAQ Level 2, TotalView and other depth-of-book market data feeds, Strategy Studio and strategy APIs allow liquidity seekers all the information in the marketplace.
4. Strategy Studio - strategy agent integration. Now the Marketcetera Platform allows Traders to directly deploy strategies on remote servers. Traders can manage multiple agents through Strategy Studio that may be running on multiple servers, offering new levels of trading scalability and control.