Fidessa group plc (LSE: FDSA) today announced the next step in its award-winning Optimized Trading initiative, Fidessa Prospector, which discovers potential trading and crossing opportunities that would otherwise not be found.

Sales traders today need to be more efficient than ever before, but this is made harder by the huge volume and complexity of data available to them. Up until now the only tools available have been standalone, located in different systems and required manual intervention across each of them in order to produce any meaningful output.

Prospector is tightly integrated within Fidessa's OMS, with no need to move between applications or re-key data. Prospector monitors both live and historical client trading activity, client 'watch lists', shareholdings data and traders' interests. This provides genuine insight and context, and so answers the key questions: Who do I call right now? What do I say? Who do I call next?

Jay Biancamano, Head of Equities Product Marketing for Fidessa in the Americas, commented: "With Prospector, traders are immediately alerted to matching opportunities for live orders and any historic activity for the accounts they cover, with no information leakage. They won’t miss trading opportunities and, crucially, they can strike fast. In today's highly competitive markets, that's a real differentiator."

Prospector uniquely allows traders to populate their internal merchandise boards manually or automatically, giving them a level of control that is not available with other solutions. Color-coded heat maps for live orders and historic activity enable traders to quickly spot the most relevant matches. Prospector also uses a unique algorithm that dynamically reflects historical activity over time and so delivers results that are ever more customized to the individual sales trader and his clients.

"The search for liquidity is all about bringing together the right information, the right way, and then acting fast. This delivers meaningful value for the buy-side and, importantly, is something they will pay for," concluded Biancamano.

Fidessa's Optimized Trading initiative is focused on extending the range of integrated tools available in its OMS to provide the 'super sales traders' of today with powerful insight, and so empowering them in an increasingly automated and competitive world. This innovative approach was recognized at the Wall Street Letter Institutional Trading Awards last month with Fidessa voted Best Equities Trading Platform for Innovation.