All posts by Trading Technologies

TT: The Next Generation…of Interns

By:
LinkedIn
TT interns grab some snacks from the kitchen and socialize at the Chicago headquarters. 

I’m just now starting my second month as a summer intern at TT, and to be honest, my experience was not what I originally anticipated.

To my surprise, I walked into a corporate playground—an oxymoron filled with unlimited snacks, any and every beverage you could ever dream of, an extensive game room, and—get this—a bar. I then got to my desk, which was adorned with yet more snacks and a picture of Eric Estrada (I, as a college student, admittedly had to ask who he was) awaiting my arrival. To say I was taken aback by everything was an understatement. And I was a little uncomfortable as I was the only one in the building wearing a blazer.

This all made me a little apprehensive as I was acclimated to a more corporate environment in past internships and experiences. I honestly questioned how people got work done with so many distractions—let alone how they stayed healthy with bagels every morning and Doritos at arms reach. That is until I actually started working and met the people I would be working with.

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Speaking In Code Part 1: The Female Perspective on Life in Technology

By:
LinkedIn

As head of HR at TT, I like to think we make a concerted effort to stay on top of important workforce issues in the news, whether those topics have surfaced at TT or in the greater tech industry. And one of the biggest topics of debate right now, at least in our industry, is that of women in tech. Or more specifically, the lack of women in the technology industry, particularly in engineering and leadership roles.

Much of the news is negative, unfortunately. In the past few months alone, you haven’t had to look hard to find discouraging headlines, whether on a national scale (Why are women leaving the tech industry in droves?) or specific to Chicago (1871 won’t launch delayed women-in-tech vertical as an incubator). Of course, most working in tech probably don’t need a headline to tell them that—just by doing the “eye test” at industry events, it’s easy to see that women are vastly outnumbered.

But it’s not just about numbers, either—it’s about whether if we, as an industry, see women as equal to men. With Techweek Chicago approaching, we’re reminded of last year’s controversy, when the conference sent out invitations deemed to be sexist and emblematic of the problem by many in the community. It could be a chicken-or-egg question, determining whether a sexist culture has developed because of a lack of women, or if that culture has in fact led to the lack of women. It may be a bit of both, but either way it’s an issue.

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#TTtraining: Risk and Administration

By:
LinkedIn

Last week on Twitter, #TTtraining highlighted new TT platform training material targeted to both risk and system administrators.

Our improved User Setup application features robust account-based risk, an improved interface, and exchange-specific fields to provide administrators the tools they need to quickly get users set up and trading. For example, administrators can:

  • Leverage exchange-specific terminology to quickly add Drop Copy FIX and exchange connections.
  • Create, apply, and transfer product limits across users, accounts, and sub-accounts.
  • Set up and apply maximum positions per contract.
  • Apply credit limits to any user or account.

Below you’ll find the content we shared last week on Twitter. It includes all of the training videos, and it links directly to our training site.

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#TTtraining: Analytics and Charting

By:
LinkedIn

We’re excited to announce our one-stop online destination for all training materials related to the TT platform. The new training site contains training videos and materials targeted to both traders and administrators, with even more topics in development. The site also allows users with a TT login to save training materials under the My Tutorials section for later viewing.

Last week on Twitter, #TTtraining highlighted new training material for the TT platform analytics and charting functionality.

The TT Charts and Time and Sales widgets provide users with a variety of robust tools to assess the market and make informed trading decisions. For example, traders can:

  • Quickly and easily view the high, low, open and close for any product using TT Charts.
  • Leverage over 80 technical indicators to analyze market activity.
  • Identify market trends with moving averages.
  • Easily view trade data with the Time and Sales widget.

And just like the trading application, the analytics and charting apps are accessible via Android and iOS mobile devices through TT Mobile.

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Synthetic Spread Charts in the TT Platform

By:
LinkedIn

I recently ran across an interesting post on EliteTrader. The author was looking for software capable of charting synthetic spreads with more than two legs such as the bund-bobl-schatz fly or crack spread. I shared my thoughts on the topic in the EliteTrader forum, but I thought the topic was compelling enough to address here on Trade Talk.

As was mentioned on EliteTrader by another member, charting a synthetic spread created from the underlying legs is not as simple as comparing the last traded price of one leg to the others or using one-minute bar data to compute the spread prices. To prevent from “charting a mirage” as the member stated in the post, we have gone out of our way to provide a better spread chart here at TT. We capture all best bid-ask market moves and traded prices, such that we look at one leg’s best bid or ask price when a trade occurs on the other leg’s bid or ask.

The above method creates an excellent synthetic spread chart, and we support up to 10 legs in a spread. The nice thing about TT is once you create the spread for trading, there is no additional work to create the spread chart. You can request the synthetic instrument and add studies and drawing tools just like a regular instrument in the chart.

Our bid-to-bid/ask-to-ask spread charts will calculate a spread price whenever there is a trade on one leg. If the trade occurs on the bid of leg one, then we will look at the bid of the other legs if they are required to sell and the ask if they are required to buy to determine the spread price. This effectively acts as getting edge on one leg with a limit fill, and the other legs going to market to complete the spread.

Synthetic spread charts (L) will have more data and provide more information
about how a spread moves compared to exchange traded spread charts (R).

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