Credit Suisse and Instinet Europe Limited (IEL), the European agency brokerage subsidiary of Nomura’s Instinet Inc, executed their first trades on each others’ dark pools via their smart order routers (SOR) and algorithmic trading platforms in the trading week ending 25 July. Exact terms of the agreement were not disclosed, as were the European stocks traded between the parties.

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Smart order routing (SOR) technology is set to become the “hub of competition” in the European equities trading space, while providing end asset owners with enhanced basis point execution performance boils down to robust routing technology being in place, Richard Balarkas, CEO of Instinet Europe Limited (IEL) argues.

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European investment bank Landsbanki Kepler says its smart order router (SOR) strategy, based on technology from GL Trade and implemented due to MiFID, has resulted in price improvements of between 0.3 and 1.2 basis points for trades being executed away from the ‘home markets’, for example on Chi-X. Those trades comprise up to 15% of the order volume.

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4th Story has released 4S.Blue Ridge algorithmic trading server, which can host standard execution strategies such as VWAP, pegged orders, volume participation and pairs/multi-leg management, as well as sophisticated custom strategies for both agency and principal applications. 4S.Blue Ridge can also run smart order routing algorithms to help maximize execution efficiency and meet MiFID and Reg NMS regulatory requirements.

Progress Software Corporation has launched the Progress Apama Smart Order Router (SOR) Accelerator, to enable traders to create proprietary order routing strategies that intelligently select execution venues from among the many exchanges, multilateral trading facilities and dark liquidity pools. According to the vendor, the Apama SOR Accelerator helps both sell side and buy side firms address the stringent and complex regulatory demands under Europe’s MiFID and the US’s RegNMS for best execution. The Apama SOR Accelerator is built on Apama’s complex event processing platform and comprises a set of customer-selectable integration adapters, configurable order routing logic and trade monitoring dashboards. The solution leverages experience derived from several client implementations, Progress Apama claims.

DSAL, real-time complex data and event processing provider, has unveiled results from the second in a series of performance tests carried out at Intel facilities using the StreamBase Complex Event Processing (CEP) engine running on Intel processors. The latest performance test focused on the change in performance as a result of upgrading from StreamBase’s CEP engine version 3.7 to version 5.0, and upgrading from Intel Single Socket Dual Core processors to Intel Twin Socket Quad Core processors. The results achieved were a 48 per cent increase in updates processed per second and a 53 per cent reduction in the standard deviation between updates processed per second. The vendors say the speed and complexity of both algorithmic and systematic trading coupled with incremental growth in volumes of market data have necessitated the creation of ever more efficient data processing tools. ”In the new fragmented world smart order routing is becoming more complex and the requirement for speed is ever present. It is therefore very pleasing to see that technology is once again stepping up to the challenge,” comments Bob Fuller, ex CEO of Equiduct

Smart order routing is the name of the game for firms seeking to thrive not merely survive under MiFID, we are told, and a flurry of announcements from connectivity providers in the first weeks of the new regime would suggest that many firms in Europe have taken this message on board – and are keen to free themselves of the burden of developing the technology required and utilise instead third-party offerings. But will third-party smart order routing capabilities be enough in the long term to differentiate the real winners?

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Atos Euronext Market Solutions (AEMS) and Dexia Securities France have partnered to offer a MiFID solution for brokers, to be available from July this year. Comprising a smart order router and an analysis and reporting tool, the solution is designed to support brokers in complying with the best execution, transparency and reporting elements of MiFID.

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