Bankers Trust Moves To Wireless Trading With Order For Reuters' MarketClip

NEW YORK--Bankers Trust is about to purchase approximately 100 units of Reuters' MarketClip handheld wireless terminal. The New York bank will use the terminal in several of its investment banking and money management areas, including its equity fund management operations and on the sell side, in equities trading, says Virginia Gambale, chief information officer and managing director at BT Alex. Brown, the investment banking arm of Bankers Trust.

Initially, the MarketClip will only be used for real-time price quotes, charts, news headlines, market summaries and alerts, but Gambale sees the purchase of the 100 terminals as a first step toward wireless trading throughout BT Alex. Brown.

"We anticipate eventually integrating it with the transaction side of the business," Gambale says. "The introduction of this technology is going to bring brokerage and banking to another plane, in that the objective of the business is to be out with clients as much as possible." The New York company will be looking to integrate the technology with its order-placement systems and brokerage research areas.

Along with Bankers Trust, the other beta sites included Merrill Lynch, says Brendan Connelly, marketing manager at Reuters. A monthly license for the Market Clip costs $115, although Reuters also charges a one-time start-up fee, which was not disclosed.

Reuters' developed the product with Aether Technologies, a Baltimore-based wireless technology developer. The MarketClip transmits data via cellular digital packet data (CDPD) transmission, which breaks data into packets and carries them on unused channels of the existing cellular voice network. Each CDPD packet can typically hold 512 bytes of data or three-quarters of a page of text that will seamlessly reassemble at the receiving end. CDPD, which is now considered a mature standard within the industry, has open specifications based on TCP/IP protocol.

The launch of MarketClip coincides with the demise of what was perhaps the first mass-market handheld computer, Apple Computer's Newton. Last week, Apple announced it was ceasing development on the Newton technology, which was unveiled by Apple's former chief executive John Sculley back in 1992.

Apple never managed to snare a sufficient share of the market for handheld devices, and it is scrapping the Newton just as handheld devices seem to be making significant headway into market-specific financial applications.

Along with Reuters' Market Clip, the Wireless Internet Trading System from w-Trade Technologies of New York was launched last month (Trading Technology Week, February 23). Like the MarketClip, w-Trade also offers customized alerts about market fluctuations, real-time price quotes and portfolio management functions. However, w-Trade also offers trade execution and confirmation.

w-Trade's software runs off an IP network and supports other handheld, wireless devices including cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and hand-held PC devices. The system is integrated via applications programming interfaces (APIs) that connect w-Trade's solution to trading systems that use Reuters Triarch or Tibco's The Information Bus (BUS) as the digital distribution backbone.

The w-Trade solution runs about $151,000, which includes limited customization. The company also offers an off-the-shelf version that can be implemented over intranets or other private communication lines.