Talking about volatility... In what had to be one of the craziest and most volatile days in the forex history Euro lost about 2% against the Dollar and Yen plummeted more than 5%. All stock exchanged were down while Dow Jones was down as much as 9% in an intraday trading yesterday. I'm sure many brokers and networks had a really bad day and their clients experienced huge spikes in spreads, re-quotes and outages.
What follows is Integral Press Release which states that Integral not only didn't experience any difficulties but also pretty much enjoyed the day. I don't yet have the exact details regarding who failed to deliver and who passed this crazy day unscathed but it seems that Integral's aggregation model is working.
Integral’s OTC FX Trading Network and Liquidity Aggregation Service Excel During Record-breaking Day
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (May 7, 2010) — During a record breaking day for FX markets that caused outages and interruptions of service for some market participants, Integral Development Corp. (www.integral.com) reported flawless execution. On Thursday, May 6, 2010, FX Grid® processed more than 1,600 trades and 3,100,000 rates per minute at peak times. FX Grid is an OTC FX trading network, linking market making financial institutions with FX market participants. Over the course of the day, FX Grid processed more than 150,000 trades powering hundreds of white-labeled FX markets. Over 200 institutions and 1,500 trading parties have deployed Integral’s aggregation services as the basis of their successful FX businesses.
“It is only under market stress that one finds out which promises from service providers are actually true. Integral promised unrivaled liquidity and execution and we delivered,” said Harpal Sandhu, CEO, Integral Development Corp. “Our fault-tolerant systems provided non-stop access to pricing and execution, even in the face of outages from individual contributing banks and technology service providers. Aggregation really works if you partner with a world-class service provider like Integral.”
Added Sandhu: “As the provider and operator of FX Grid, we had a front-row view into the market activity. While a number of single-bank feeds intermittently failed to supply liquidity, Integral’s aggregated dealer-driven liquidity remained rock solid and delivered superior execution. In fact, some clients executed orders of up to 100 million Euros with immediacy and zero slippage from the volume- weighted average price (VWAP).”
Integral’s FX Liquidity Aggregation solution seamlessly connects to all major market making financial institutions and other sources to deliver executable pricing to internal and external users via GUI and API. The entire platform is delivered as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which allows customers and partners to deliver immediate results to their users and quickly respond to business opportunities with zero capital investment.
About Integral
Integral develops and operates FX Grid, a global Multi-sided Trading Facility (MTF) connecting active market participants with all major sources of FX liquidity. Together with FX Inside, its real-time Execution Management System (EMS), Integral’s products represent the intersection of direct market access and algorithmic trading in the foreign exchange markets. Founded in 1993, Integral maintains development, support, and sales offices in Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore and Bangalore. Investors include Accel Partners, Adams Street Partners, Hudson Ventures, Ignite Group, Mizuho Capital and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. For more information, visit www.integral.com
