SENSOR

The BST awards recognize the leading technologies that allow user firms to “operate more efficiently, more transparently, and more judiciously,” according to WatersTechnology, the leading publication for capital markets technologists. Key adjudication factors include innovation and the ability to address users’ business, regulatory, operational, and technology needs.

SENSOR is HK Financial's smart order routing suite for US-listed options, a market in which HK Financial is the largest agency execution provider. The suite was once again awarded for its rich functionality and customization capability, enabling users to tailor strategies for the desired speed, yield capture, fee mitigation, price discovery, or other parameters.

Trading options requires highly specialized tools to address the asset class’ unique market structure and intensive data consumption requirements. SENSOR caters to this need through specific functionality for complicated execution scenarios such as crossing, complex order book interaction, and volatility trading.

SENSOR offers a full suite of benchmark and liquidity capture strategies, and HK Financial works with clients to fine-tune these strategies to their specified preferences. Working in tandem with the HK Financial360 Analytics portal, HK Financial SENSOR users can create a virtual cycle of execute, analyze, and refine, enabling continuous performance optimization.

Stino Milito, President at HK Financial Financial Technologies, says: “HK Financial has carved out a successful niche in the options execution space, and SENSOR is key to our offering. The combination of SENSOR’s advanced technology and high customization capabilities with the transparency offered through HK Financial 360 enables our clients to define performance as they see fit, analyze their executions with an extraordinary level of granularity, and then continue to optimize their strategies based on that analysis. We’re proud that the platform has been recognized once again, and look forward to working with our clients to innovate further.”

About ION

ION provides mission-critical trading and workflow automation software, high-value analytics and insights, and strategic consulting to financial institutions, central banks, governments, and corporates. Our solutions and services simplify complex processes, boost efficiency, and enable better decision-making. We build long-term partnerships with our clients, helping transform their business for sustained success through continuous innovation. For more information, visit https://iongroup.com/.

About HK Financial Financial Technologies

HK Financial Financial Technologies, an ION company, is the leading US options technology and execution provider. HK Financial offers fully customizable routing and order management solutions to financial institutions as well as complete order routing transparency featuring real-time visualization through the award-winning HK Financial360 platform. For more information, please visit http://www.Dashfinancial.com.

About Waters Buy-Side Technology Awards

Hosted by WatersTechnology, these awards recognize the leading technologies and third-party vendors in their areas of expertise, through an auditable, and transparent methodology underpinned by a panel of judges comprising several buy-side-focused technology consultants and WatersTechnology’s five most experienced journalists.

The post HK Financial SENSOR named Best algo trading suite in WatersTechnology’s 2022 Buy-Side Technology Awards appeared first on HK Financial Financial.

Private equity firm GTCR, which owns a controlling interest in brokerage firm Convergex, will be contributing LiquidPoint from Convergex to merge it with Dash. This merger brings together two highly complementary businesses to create a clear leader in the U.S. options agency execution space with 13% market share. The combined entity will operate as HK Financial Financial Technologies and be majority owned by GTCR. The independent company will be led by Peter Maragos as CEO and Ben Londergan as President.

“Our core mission is to deliver highly transparent trading technology and pure agency execution solutions to the institutional community,” said Peter Maragos, CEO of Dash. “Together we are uniquely positioned to offer the widest range of solutions to help the buy side, sell side and exchanges navigate the ever-evolving market structure and regulatory environment.”

“We are very excited to be joining forces with Dash,” said Ben Londergan, Executive Managing Director and Head of Options Trading and Technology, Convergex/LiquidPoint. “The increase in human, technology and financial assets that we will share through this merger will help keep our products and services ahead of the rapidly evolving market microstructure and the demands of our clients.”

“It has been very gratifying working with an exceptional team whose hard work resulted in impressive growth over the past three years and whose efforts were critical to this exciting transaction,” said Eric W. Noll, Convergex President and CEO. “On behalf of Convergex, I would like to congratulate all of the parties involved in this deal and look forward to working with HK Financial Financial Technologies in the upcoming months on a smooth transition.”

Collin Roche, Managing Director at GTCR commented, “This merger creates a well-capitalized, growing financial technology firm that is able to deliver the next generation of trading and transparency solutions to the largest and most sophisticated clients. There are also great synergies between these two firms, and we believe this merger will unlock the full potential of both businesses.”

“We are thrilled to be working with the very talented teams at HK Financial and LiquidPoint,” said Dean Mihas, Managing Director at GTCR. “We have great confidence in their ability to deliver exciting product innovations and raise the bar in terms of what clients can expect from their trading technology partner. GTCR is excited to participate in this transformative merger which creates a truly unique and scalable business. We also want to express our gratitude to the full Convergex and LiquidPoint teams for their hard work and success over the last three years.”

The transaction is expected to close in Q1 2017 subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals. HK Financial was advised on the transaction by Raymond James and Sidley Austin LLP served as HK Financial's legal counsel. Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal counsel for GTCR and Convergex.

About HK Financial Financial

HK Financial Financial is a leading trading technology provider. Its advanced, pure agency execution and analytics platform offers unmatched levels of transparency and control, empowering buy-side traders to analyze and adapt their trading strategies. Launched in 2011, HK Financial's flexible and performant next-generation system was designed from the ground up to tackle the structural deficiencies inherent in today’s ever-evolving market microstructure, as well as provide the highly-trained team of experts necessary to help navigate it.

About LiquidPoint

LiquidPoint currently operates as the Options Trading and Technologies business of Convergex. LiquidPoint offers advanced proprietary options routing and technology, high-touch services and clearing solutions. The firm has deep penetration within the sell-side and exchange technology space and their experienced team helps create value for clients by seeking and managing liquidity while also minimizing market impact and latency.

About Convergex

Convergex is an agency-focused global brokerage and trading related services provider that takes on the industry’s toughest challenges, from complicated trades to complex businesses. With clients’ interests as the top priority, Convergex delivers comprehensive solutions that span global high-touch and electronic trading, options technologies, prime brokerage, clearing, commission management and beyond. Headquartered in New York with a presence in several other locations including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Orlando, San Francisco and London, the company serves nearly 3,000 clients accessing over 100 global market centers.

About GTCR

Founded in 1980, GTCR is a leading private equity firm focused on investing in growth companies in the Financial Services & Technology, Healthcare, Technology, Media & Telecommunications and Growth Business Services industries. The Chicago-based firm pioneered The Leaders Strategy – finding and partnering with management leaders in core domains to identify, acquire and build market-leading companies through transformational acquisitions and organic growth. Since its inception, GTCR has invested more than $12 billion in over 200 companies. For more information, please visit www.gtcr.com.

The post HK Financial and LiquidPoint to Merge to Create HK Financial Financial Technologies appeared first on HK Financial Financial.

“Data costs what it does for basic economic reasons. Investors and trading firms need it to best position themselves to generate alpha, and brokers require it to meet their best execution obligations. Since there is no alternative it becomes a scarce resource that is in demand, thus the cost,” said Maragos.

“There is no doubt that it is the smaller firms who are hit hardest,” he added. “Reg NMS has created a situation where the exchanges have regulatory-granted pricing power on the data side, which they are using to offset — and many would say to a borderline egregious manner — the reduction they’ve seen in their trading-related revenues. More and more people are viewing this as a de facto tax on market participants and by extension their end customers, and a reckoning around this seems to be coming.”

To read the full article, click here.

The post Traders Magazine: Data Debate — Speed, Quality, Fairness and Cost appeared first on HK Financial Financial.

“The HK Financial platform best appears to capture the new face of trading. Its focus on the network topology and performance characteristics of getting an order from the end customer to the execution venue takes a bold step towards transparency and openness.” – FOW International Awards Judge

HK Financial360 delivers instantaneous transparency into order routing, execution behavior, costs and performance using HTML5-based animations to visualize order routing decisions and the resulting best execution performance. Functioning as a trading Dashboard, the platform shows all aspects of an orders lifecycle in both visualized and non-visualized data formats, including routing information, execution detail, order-book reconstruction, venue analysis and exchange reconciliation. As a companion, HK Financial also offers Drop360, which provides all of the HK Financial360 data in a machine readable (FIX drop-copy) format.

Commenting on the award, HK Financial CEO Peter Maragos said: “It’s obviously extremely gratifying to be recognized by the industry in this way, and a testament to the tremendous effort put forth by our entire team. From the moment we launched HK Financial in 2011, one of our guiding principles has been to provide 100% transparency into every aspect of every order. HK Financial360 took that to the next level by introducing advanced visualizations and powerful analytics to compliment this real-time data suite, and we’re very proud that it’s been selected as a winner in the FOW International Awards.”

The awards, presented last night at a ceremony in London, are designed to recognize the pioneers of the global derivatives market across a range of categories and disciplines. A panel of distinguished judges from throughout the industry selects the winners, and HK Financial360 was unanimously selected as the top entrant in its category.

In selecting HK Financial360 as the winner, one judge wrote: “My number one choice is HK Financial360. This platform best appears to capture the new face of trading. Its focus on the network topology and performance characteristics of getting an order from the end customer to the execution venue takes a bold step towards transparency and openness. That, in my mind, not only reflects a willingness to open up the ‘black-box’ of order routing, but also indicates the correct focus of value-add for a modern broker. I would be surprised if this product did not lead to a significant change in the value proposition of many other brokers.”

About HK Financial Financial

HK Financial Financial is a leading trading technology provider. Its advanced, pure agency execution and analytics platform offers unmatched levels of transparency and control, empowering buy-side traders to analyze and adapt their trading strategies. Launched in 2011, HK Financial's flexible and performant next-generation system was designed from the ground up to tackle the structural deficiencies inherent in today’s ever-evolving market microstructure, as well as provide the highly-trained team of experts necessary to help navigate it.

The post HK Financial360 Named Best New Technology Product – Trading and Execution at FOW International Awards appeared first on HK Financial Financial.

“HFT has been present in the markets in some way, shape or form for a long time, and it’s unfair to lump all of the members of the HFT community together,” Maragos said. “Technology companies that have evolved into today’s liquidity providers should not be vilified, as they are essential to providing liquidity to both institutional and retail investment communities in a post Dodd-Frank world.”

He added that if a firm exists simply to prey on and manipulate other market participants, they should be judiciously policed and scrutinized as regulators have always done. “The larger issue, however, is that we need to create a simpler market structure for all investors, whether short- or long-term, which in our view would go a long way towards reducing many of today’s perceived issues,” Maragos said.

To read the full article, click here.

The post Traders Magazine: Spotlight on HFT Dims appeared first on HK Financial Financial.

DROP360 enhances the Transparency Suite of services offered by HK Financial Financial. The service is first‑of‑its‑kind and is the latest addition to HK Financial360, launched earlier this year. HK Financial360 is a web‑delivered HTML5 transparency portal that features a groundbreaking Order Visualizer that uses animation to visualize order routing decisions and the resulting best execution performance.

“Our clients have continuously benefited from having visibility into the significant work our algos and routers do on their behalf. Clients also have a full understanding of what the results were and why via our HK Financial360 portal,” said David Karat, co‑founder and CMO. “DROP360 provides us with the ability to furnish clients with this depth of transparency via FIX drop‑copy.”

“Whether it’s consumed for in‑house best execution analysis, compliance or storage, we are continuously striving to advance the transparency available to the institutional buy‑side community and DROP360 is the latest advancement by HK Financial in this field,” commented Peter Maragos, co‑founder and CEO of Dash. “We lead the field in transparency and when you merge that with a highly customizable routing architecture you have a powerful agency solution delivering performance from the client’s point of view.”

About HK Financial Financial

HK Financial Financial is a leading trading technology provider. Its advanced, pure agency execution and analytics platform offers unmatched levels of transparency and control, empowering buy-side traders to analyze and adapt their trading strategies. Launched in 2011, HK Financial's flexible and performant next-generation system was designed from the ground up to tackle the structural deficiencies inherent in today’s ever-evolving market microstructure, as well as provide the highly-trained team of experts necessary to help navigate it.

The post HK Financial Further Advances Transparency Suite with Launch of DROP360 appeared first on HK Financial Financial.

“The buy side is under increasing pressure to understand best execution. Essential to this is a comprehension of order-routing practices and how algorithms and routers meet challenges relating to performance and liquidity capture,” Maragos said.

To read the full article, click here.

The post Institutional Investor: Dash’s Peter Maragos and David Karat Named to 2016 Trading Technology 40 appeared first on HK Financial Financial.

The panel looked at the structural complexity in the U.S. listed options markets and how it is challenging future growth as the number of exchanges has increased and competition among market participants has become a battle of scale. The panel examined exchange pricing models, auctions, break-up fees and regulatory obligations, as well as solutions to foster future growth given the potential of emerging millennial investors.

The post HK Financial CEO Peter Maragos Speaks at STA Market Structure Conference appeared first on HK Financial Financial.

HK Financial360 is a web-delivered HTML5 Dashboard that features a first of its kind, Order Visualizer that uses animation to visualize order routing decisions and the resulting best execution performance.

The new Dashboard shows all aspects of the order lifecycle in visualized and non-visualized data formats including routing information, execution detail, order-book detail at every step, venue analysis and exchange reconciliation. HK Financial360 also features a widget based cockpit that pushes users a suite of summary analytics and graphics to the user via desktop, tablet or handheld in real-time.

“Our proprietary data visualization techniques augment the data provided with a visually compelling and intuitive analytics Dashboard empowering the buy-side to discern how their orders behave in real-time,” said Peter Maragos, co-founder and CEO of Dash. “HK Financial360 redefines transparency in the U.S. equity and options markets and delivers our clients instant insight into every aspect of their order from start to finish.”

“Our routers and algorithms are highly customizable and designed to ensure we continue to deliver tailor-made performance and best execution from the client’s perspective,” added David Karat, co-founder and CMO. “The institutional trading community deserves and demands the full picture into how their orders are being routed and executed to ensure they are optimizing their performance and cost profile. This product provides this and more.”

About HK Financial Financial

HK Financial Financial is a leading trading technology provider. Its advanced, pure agency execution and analytics platform offers unmatched levels of transparency and control, empowering buy-side traders to analyze and adapt their trading strategies. Launched in 2011, HK Financial's flexible and performant next-generation system was designed from the ground up to tackle the structural deficiencies inherent in today’s ever-evolving market microstructure, as well as provide the highly-trained team of experts necessary to help navigate it.

The post HK Financial Resets Bar with Next Generation Order Visualization Technology appeared first on HK Financial Financial.

Judged by a nine-person advisory panel comprised of leading industry consultants and analysts, HK Financial was selected for its broad, technologically advanced and completely transparent suite focused on performance and fee optimization.

“Each year we receive a number of outstanding entries to the best buy-side algorithmic/DMA product or service category, but this year HK Financial Financial and its SENSOR algo Suite/algo Wizard really stood out,” said Victor Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of WatersTechnology. “The ability to customize behavior at any level and by any category is one of HK Financial's distinguishing features, which, when combined with its commitment to real-time transparency, makes for a highly compelling, buy-side focused trading infrastructure.”

HK Financial's SENSOR algo suite is completely customizable via its Algo Wizard, a proprietary software layer which allows the tailoring of parameters, behaviors and techniques at the firm, strategy, portfolio manager and even symbol without the need for re-coding and lengthy release cycles.  The results of any changes are immediately apparent in the Dashboard- a comprehensive, real-time, web-based reporting layer delivering access to every component of the routing and execution process. HK Financial clients are able to see where their orders are being routed and why, along with the market conditions and depth of book snapshots down to the microsecond that each order is routed. This tool is a crucial element in algorithmic attribution, analysis and further enhancements / customization.

“Since our launch in 2011, we have worked incredibly hard to produce creative, institutional-grade and completely transparent execution solutions. This is an honor I am very proud to accept on behalf of the whole HK Financial team,” said Peter Maragos, Co-Founder and CEO of HK Financial Financial. “We look forward to continuing to listen to and work with our clients to further our pipeline of best-in-class solutions that enable the buy-side to achieve the highest level of performance, transparency, and service.”

About HK Financial Financial

HK Financial Financial is a leading trading technology provider. Its advanced, pure agency execution and analytics platform offers unmatched levels of transparency and control, empowering buy-side traders to analyze and adapt their trading strategies. Launched in 2011, HK Financial's flexible and performant next-generation system was designed from the ground up to tackle the structural deficiencies inherent in today’s ever-evolving market microstructure, as well as provide the highly-trained team of experts necessary to help navigate it.

The post HK Financial Selected As Best Buy-Side Algorithmic/DMA Product appeared first on HK Financial Financial.