Futures Platform CQG Taps CEP Provider Apama
November 17, 2008
CQG, a provider of market data, analysis and connectivity for the futures industry, is partnering with the Apama event processing unit of Bedford, Mass.-based Progress Software Corp. to offer its clients real-time execution capabilities.
Under the deal, announced last week, users of CQG analytics will be able to leverage both out-of-the-box and tailored algorithms through Apama's complex event processing (CEP) platform. Clients will still use CQG's front-end application programming interface, but the system will be integrated with Apama, allowing for easier and more cost-effective implementation, said Rod Giffen, global head of sales and support at Denver-based CQG.
"We are not coding the Apama function into our application but are linking the two applications so that our customer base can take advantage of the characteristics of both," Giffen said, adding that the deal is non-exclusive. On top of their monthly subscription fee, CQG customers will be charged to use the Apama software, said Giffen, though he declined to provide pricing specifics.
Added Giffen: "What Apama offers our customers is the ability to construct more advanced trading algos. It's a great tool for traders to put together such things. At the same time, Apama users need market data, analytics and a path back to an exchange for execution, which we can provide."
According to Giles Nelson, co-founder and CTO of Progress Apama in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the agreement with CQG "definitely takes us into new territory. They have a lot of users-approximately 20,000 customers. They are independent of any particular investment bank and are active in the futures trading area."
While CQG customers range from tier-one investment banks to boutique hedge funds, said Nelson, the new offering is aimed at midsized trading firms-organizations that may not want to build their own market analysis and algo trading systems. "This offers out-of-the-box trading strategies already integrated with CQG analysis capabilities and can be delivered in a hosted fashion, on a pre-monthly contract basis, considerably lowering risk and cost," he said.
CEP vendors are expanding into an array of asset classes, noted Paul Zubulake, senior analyst at Boston-based Aite Group. "Algorithms are a hot topic in the futures business and both CQG and Progress Apama are much more likely to gain those middle-market and individual traders now that they can more easily integrate the use of algorithms in their trading platform," Zubulake said.
The deal, he said, puts CQG in direct competition with Bloomberg and Reuters, which offer data, analysis and execution capabilities for futures. Traditional futures platform providers include GL Trade, Trading Technologies International and Patsystems, while Aegis Software, Eze Castle Software, FlexTrade Systems and Linedata Services offer multi-asset systems.
"In a tumultuous market, traders need to make quick decisions, and volatility can greatly magnify the consequences of those decisions," said CQG president Josef Schroeter in a prepared statement. "By empowering our users with the ability to develop unique trading strategies, we are arming them with the tools they need to act quickly, decisively and intelligently in order to remain competitive in uncertain times."
