Mantara Expands expressWay CHiPS Offering to Provide Distributed Pre-Trade Risk Solution

JERSEY CITY, N.J., Feb. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Mantara, Inc., a provider of advanced technology solutions for high-frequency trading and ultra-low latency direct market access has expanded its CHiPS™ risk offering to provide a fully distributed pre-trade risk control solution for market participants seeking to manage risk across multiple trading venues.

Increasingly, US equity trading has become characterized by ultra low-latency direct market access across multiple exchanges.  Contributing to a significant majority of the total daily traded volume, high-frequency trading firms have led this evolution rapidly followed by the remaining trading community.  The result is a faster and more fragmented market structure clustered around a handful of major exchange facilities.  

With this shift, both exchanges and brokers must conform to the new paradigm by applying high-speed pre-trade risk controls and monitoring that function across a mesh of counterparties and facilities.  Leveraging its proven low-latency risk solution, Mantara has designed and implemented a framework to address these challenges with near-zero impact on trade latency.

An integral part of Mantara's ultra-low latency expressWay™ product suite, CHiPS (Comprehensive High-Frequency Patrol System) offers a cutting edge pre-trade risk control gateway and monitoring system for exchanges, brokers, and clients to fulfill their new SEC 15c3-5 obligations.  Building upon its risk control competency at individual venues the system now enables real-time distributed risk control that synchronizes trading exposures and provides limits to activity across multiple co-location trading facilities.

"UBS leverages Mantara's expressWay and CHiPS offerings to provide a solution for sophisticated automated traders at key exchange facilities," said Charlie Susi, UBS Managing Director and Head of Direct Execution for the Americas.  "Clients in this space often trade cross-asset and cross-market strategies, so they need the ability to seamlessly manage risks across all of these environments. This expansion of Mantara's risk control gateway answers that need."

The CHiPS pre-trade risk layer is deployed at each co-location facility with a central 'instance' of CHiPS that aggregates all trading activity from each deployment.  The combined information is then disseminated back to all sites for synchronization of the total trading exposures between sites setting limits for enforcement at each co-location.  

Regardless of whether instances are sponsored by exchanges or brokers, or purchased by high-frequency trading firms for use across multiple brokers and exchanges, CHiPS instances work in tandem enabling each participant to see and manage the relevant information.  Each trading entity (exchange, broker, buy-side) can see and manage the pertinent information and apply appropriate thresholds and limits to each firm, desk, user, and account—all in real time.

"Effective risk control and oversight is one of the most pressing issues facing those executing high-frequency trading and direct market access strategies," noted Shawn Sloves, Mantara's head of product and strategy.  "It's incredibly challenging technologically to deliver at an individual level let alone on a distributed basis, without levying a tremendous tax on latency.  We are pleased to be able to provide the market with a solution to meet these complex compliance requirements without impeding trading efficiency."

About Mantara

Headquartered in Jersey City, NJ, Mantara, Inc. is transforming securities trading worldwide through the development and delivery of integrated, ultra-low latency, high-speed trading and analytics solutions. With its next-generation expressWay trading platform, Mantara is delivering innovative solutions to the financial trading community. For more information on Mantara, visit www.mantara.com

Mantara, expressWay and CHiPS are registered trademarks of Mantara, Inc. in the United States.

SOURCE Mantara, Inc.