COESfx Offers One-Click Cancellations

NEW YORK—Foreign exchange (FX) customers of the COESfx ECN now have a one-click cancellation feature that kills all orders and liquidates positions transacted via the ECN's Currency Order Execution System (COES) Level 1 Trading Platform, officials say.

The one-click cancellation, which also covers pending positions, comes with the just-released upgrade of the ECN's flagship platform.

The new function saves end users several steps, such as filling out an order/entry screen prior to cancellation, and provides traders with a much cleaner exit than before, says Allen Plotkin, chief technology officer (CTO) for COESfx, based in Plainview, N.Y. The more direct service was created at the request of customers, Plotkin says. "The use of this feature is increasing dramatically," he says.

The updated platform, now in version 1.14, also offers a streaming FX news feed and stop order enhancements—Stop If Bid (SIB) and Stop If Offer (SIO), Plotkin says. The SIB feature enables investors to put a stop on a bid when it reaches a specific, pre-ordained price while the SIO halts the order once the offer reaches a certain price. "It gives the customers a finer granularity [for their transactions]," Plotkin says. "It allows clients to have a little cushion."

The state-of-the-art stop order functions are achieved through the use of an algorithm and COESfx's matching engine. "We have the technology to check both sides of a trade simultaneously," Plotkin says. The matching engine relies upon in-memory data management capabilities, he adds, declining to provide further details.

The transaction platform upgrade also offers a chat window that comes complete with a customizable, 80-character capacity that exploits a variety of font sizes and color-coded message status indicators, COESfx officials say.

The news and information feed, free to customers, is from Thomson Financial, COESfx officials say. The service provides headlines or full stories as well as financial data. Officials at Thomson did not return inquiries for comment by press time.

The Level 1 platform is accessed via a proprietary COESfx GUI or via a choice of APIs: the Microsoft Windows Dynamic Link Library (DLL), the Windows .Net Web services framework and the FIX protocol, Plotkin says. In general, a DLL deployment is a collection of executable functions and/or data ready for exploitation by a Windows application. DLLs can be accessed via static or dynamic connections.

The additional features and attributes are intended to give customers more control over trades, says Ronald Balzano, president of COESfx.