ANTE includes a new central trading engine, communications gateways, a trading application for specialists and market makers, as well as an application programmers interface (API) for those who want to design their own applications or use one of the third-party solutions currently being developed.
“Working with Cinnober in this important project for the Amex has been a tremendously positive experience. Their understanding of our market model, as well as their dedication to deliver quality solutions on time has enabled us to have a very successful launch of ANTE,” said Mr. Salvatore F. Sodano, Amex chairman and chief executive officer. Mr. Sodano added, “We believe that the competitiveness of the Amex has been improved through the cutting edge functionality and technology of ANTE, which increases automation and enhances regulatory oversight and compliance thereby providing benefits to the investing public.”
Mr. Gunnar Lindell, chief executive officer of Cinnober, said, “We are extremely proud to have worked with the Amex in this large project. Providing a trading platform to one of the leading exchanges in the world certainly sets a benchmark for our products and capabilities.” Mr. Lindell added, “With ANTE developed in Java, the Amex has achieved a cost-effective solution for the future that allows a great flexibility in deployment.”
The powerful trading engine and the highly competitive trading application of ANTE are characterized by:
- Speed: ANTE provides increased speed of execution through a streamlined execution process that automatically matches orders and quotes in the central book.
- Liquidity: Specialists and market makers can auto-quote or manually enter their own quotes and orders directly into the Amex market, creating tighter markets and greater liquidity.
- Instantaneous Access: Incoming customer orders are automatically matched against posted orders/quotes in the central book.
- Enhanced Surveillance: ANTE offers enhanced surveillance capabilities that track specialists and market makers as they join or leave the trading crowd. ANTE also tracks quotes and orders in the marketplace and creates order logs.
- Customer priority: Orders in ANTE are executed by price priority, with customer orders having priority over all orders, while specialists, market makers and off-floor principal orders are on parity and allocated using the specialist allocation ratio.
Additional Highlights:
- Specialists and market makers access ANTE with a highly customizable and parameter driven trading application.
- Specialists can configure and enable automatic price improvement so that their incoming customer orders are immediately traded at prices better than the posted markets.
- Amex will also publish a proprietary API, which will allow specialists and market makers to design their own custom front ends as well as interface with the ANTE trading engine.
- All executions are subject to trade-through checks, which guarantee an order routed to the Amex receives the best price available in the market.
About American Stock Exchange
The American Stock Exchange® (Amex®) is the only primary exchange that offers trading across a full range of equities, options and exchange traded funds (ETFs), including structured products and HOLDRSSM. In addition to its role as a national equities market, the Amex is the pioneer of the ETF, responsible for bringing the first domestic product to market in 1993. Leading the industry in ETF listings, the Amex lists 138 ETFs to date. The Amex is also one of the largest options exchanges in the U.S., trading options on broad-based and sector indexes as well as domestic and foreign stocks.
About Cinnober Financial Technology
Cinnober was founded in 1998 with a vision to develop a flexible and fast platform for financial transactions, using the possibilities that the Internet enables. Since then, the company has grown to employ over 70 people. The company’s major competence is in exchange systems, trading applications and Internet solutions. The company is and has been profitable since day one. Cinnober has a strong capital base and is well prepared for future development. For more information, please visit www.cinnober.com.
