OneMarketData, LLC, a leader in tick data management and analytics, today announced the launch of OneTick Strategy Backtesting, a platform for strategy development and large scale backtesting. The platform is powered by OneTick, OneMarketData’s enterprise solution for data management and time-series analytics, and utilizes global multi-asset class market history available through the OneTick Cloud service.

Backtesting measures profitability as strategies are optimized – this could be targeting for profit factor, Sharpe Ratio, max drawdown or an equity curve to improve the quality of execution decisions. Historical datasets provide “what if” market conditions as strategy parameters are varied.

OneTick offers a fully featured strategy development and large-scale backtesting platform for the most discerning quant, allowing them to:

·        Evaluate alpha or execution strategy logic against controlled market replay

·        Vary and optimize strategy parameters

·        Compare strategy instances using pre-defined and custom statistical measures

·        Exchange simulator matching engine

·        Ensure robustness of strategy logic

·        Customize dashboards to plot/chart results

Combined with the OneTick Cloud, a solution for on-demand access to global tick data history, OneTick Strategy Backtesting is offered as a hosted service or can be locally deployed. OneTick Cloud provides firms with the ability to aggregate, normalize and analyze large volumes of data, including Morningstar global tick data, using OneMarketData’s enterprise data management software, OneTick.

The solution offers complete flexibility to meet client needs, and can be combined with basic historical data access and comprehensive tooling for the construction of custom strategy analytics, simulated order flow, and PnL statistics. Clients will have the option to subscribe to more than 150 markets offering more than ten years of history (both level one and full depth of book) along with reference data, corporate actions, earnings and event dates.

“OneMarketData’s flagship product, OneTick, is a premiere solution for providing quants with the ability to manage and analyze market data,” said Leonid Frants, CEO of OneMarketData. “Analyzing historical time-series data forms the basis of backtesting trading strategy profitability. OneTick Strategy Backtesting offers the tools for quant traders and quant researchers to build and test better trade models.”

Fidessa announced that Huatai Financial Holdings Limited implemented Fidessa’s centralised order management and execution system as its Asian trading platform to support the expansion of HTSC’s equities business across the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect markets.

Huatai Financial Holdings is the Hong Kong-based securities trading subsidiary of HTSC, one of the leading online trading securities firms in mainland China. With its expansion strategy, HTSC required a solid platform, operated by an experienced firm, in order to accommodate the growth in its trading activities. Fidessa’s highly scalable, managed platform, which embraces front-office trading and middle office functionalities, caters for the firm's needs as well as market nuances. HTSC can also benefit from Fidessa’s advanced algorithmic trading tools and global connectivity network for receiving order flow.

“Being a major player in the China A share market, HTSC is renowned for its leading technology in mainland China. To extend this competitive edge abroad, we have chosen to partner with Fidessa in Hong Kong,” says Derek Sum, Executive Director at Huatai Financial Holdings. “Fidessa offers a robust trading system and it is highly rated among institutional clients. With the implementation of Fidessa, we are confident in providing our clients with a top-tier execution service for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock Connect markets.”

Jean-Pierre Baron, Managing Director at Fidessa Asia, said: “We are delighted to welcome Huatai Financial Holdings to the Fidessa community as our tenth Chinese broker client. With our algorithmic tools and technology infrastructure, clients can seamlessly trade in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock Connect markets. Fidessa’s fully-managed platform will also enable Huatai Financial Holdings to reinforce its position and concentrate on its expansion plan."

Fidessa's network provides connectivity to more than 5,100 buy-sides and 730 brokers across 215 markets globally. Each month, the network carries flow with a value of around US$1.7 trillion. Fidessa's products serve around 23,000 users at 910 clients worldwide and are used by 85% of tier-one financial institutions.

Compass Plus, an international provider of retail banking and electronic payments software to payment processors and financial institutions, has announced the fifth birthday of TranzAxis, the Open Development Payment Platform. Since its launch into production, TranzAxis has been implemented in a number of countries across the globe, including Antigua, Sweden, Russia and Jordan, and has risen to fulfil the technology requirements of companies such as GPC and Klarna.

Unlike traditional payments platforms, TranzAxis was built to meet the challenges of today’s payments landscape, from streamlining and modernising standard functionality to developing emerging payment technologies. Selected to be presented at FinovateFall 2012 in the innovation showcase, TranzAxis has since been described by a number of global analyst firms as one to watch in the payments arena.

“It has been exciting to see the development of TranzAxis from a fantastic idea to a fully-fledged platform helping FIs to run innovative payments projects,” said Anatoly Kaptsan, Chief Software Architect at Compass Plus. “Since its launch into production five years ago, the platform functionality has been extended 1000 per cent with much of its growth attributed to exciting customer-led projects enabling us to showcase its solution-based capabilities. We would like to thank our customers for helping us make TranzAxis what it is today, and for all the fantastic projects we have in the pipeline.”

“We are delighted to celebrate five years of TranzAxis and would like to send a special thanks to our customers for believing in our new technology and for being early adopters,” said Maria Nottingham, Executive Vice President at Compass Plus. “We are looking ahead to many more years of forward-thinking projects with current and prospective customers alike.”

TranzAxis is being used as the backbone of the Compass Plus GB processing centre to be launched into production in the near future. Its SOA architecture makes it the perfect platform from which to extend Compass Plus’ presence in the processing services space.

Kuwait-based Path Solutions has joined CIBAFI, the General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions as a member. CIBAFI is an international organization established in 2001 and headquartered in the Kingdom of Bahrain. It is affiliated with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

CIBAFI represents the Islamic financial services industry globally, defending and promoting its role, consolidating cooperation among its members and with other institutions with similar interests and objectives.

With nearly 120 members over 30 jurisdictions, representing market players, international intergovernmental organizations, professional firms and industry associations, CIBAFI is recognized as a key player in the international Islamic finance marketplace.

Path Solutions’ membership with CIBAFI will serve as an excellent opportunity to collaborate with the renown institution to advance the development of the Islamic financial services industry and to benchmark and further ensure conformity of the company’s Islamic software solutions and services with the Sharia.

3dcart, a leading all-in-one eCommerce solution, is offering seamless payment processing from Braintree, a PayPal company, to allow easier online sales for small and medium-sized retailers.

3dcart’s 17,000 merchants will gain access to an end-to-end payment solution in which they can approve payments with a single click.

The new integration is a cost-effective option for businesses on a tight budget, and will provide new and existing merchants with a seamless solution for accepting a wide variety of payments. Merchants who use Braintree will be able to accept PayPal and most credit and debit cards, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, JCB and Diner’s Club. Braintree will also provide merchants with sophisticated fraud protection at no additional cost, an essential to businesses of every size.

“Our Braintree solution provides seamless, innovative technology that will make selling online easier and more secure for 3dcart merchants,” said Steve Fusco, Vice President and GM, North America Distribution, PayPal. “Merchants will now be able to launch and grow their businesses with the security and support of both 3dcart and PayPal, powered by Braintree.”

As a result of Braintree’s accelerated payment process, merchants may see an increase in conversions, as well as a reduced number of cart abandonment. Furthermore, 3dcart merchants will benefit from access to future payment technology from Braintree, ensuring businesses seamlessly adapt to the latest eCommerce trends and customer preferences.

3dcart’s newest payment integration is one of a number of new features to roll out with 3dcart Version 7.0. The industry’s most powerful and fastest platform released with a plethora of new and improved features, including an iPad compatible POS System, a redesigned Control Panel and Dashboard, a new Checkout Experience, REST API, and multi-channel selling, with additional updates to 3dcart’s core platform and infrastructure for optimized response times and performance.

“We’re excited to add Braintree to our growing list of premium payment solutions,” said Gonzalo Gil, CEO of 3dcart. “PayPal and Braintree have developed a payment solution that shares our vision for cutting-edge seamlessness, and will allow our merchants to stay at the forefront of an ever-evolving, competitive market.”

As a result of this collaboration, merchants can launch an online store and start accepting payments in just minutes, which allows entrepreneurs with everything they need to be successful at online retail.

Fidessa group plc (LSE: FDSA) today announced the latest version of its Minerva buy-side order management system (OMS). Minerva sits within Fidessa's Investment Management Solutions suite which provides asset managers with comprehensive, end-to-end workflow for investment decision, compliance, orders & trading and post-trade across all asset classes.

At the same time, the company announced it is strengthening its buy-side sales function in North America to meet the evolving demands of the marketplace as well as its rapidly expanding product set. In addition, Fidessa has opened a new, expanded North American headquarters for its buy-side business in Boston.

Buy-side dealing desks worldwide are relentlessly pursuing the twin goals of best execution and maximum efficiency. Firms that can take advantage of new markets and leverage new venues while demonstrating tight operational controls bring the greatest value to the investor.

Minerva allows firms to improve efficiency by implementing a global, consistent, integrated workflow across all asset classes and regions, and at the same time delivers powerful functionality that allows them to maximize returns while enforcing controls. This latest release enhances Minerva's position as a market-leading OMS and includes: enhanced order handling capabilities across futures, options and swaps; comprehensive support for Latin American interest rate futures; more sophisticated fixed income trading functionality; support for market specific practices in Korea and Japan; identification of all crossing opportunities across dealing desks; and the use of new technologies to deliver significant performance gains.

Fidessa has re-structured and strengthened its buy-side sales function in North America to meet the evolving demands of the marketplace as well as those of its growing product set. As the buy-side product suite extends into new areas of the trading workflow, as well as into new managed services and the post-trade space, the breadth of experience and skills needed to target these new areas has grown too. As a result, the overall buy-side sales function will now be a part of the larger Fidessa group Americas sales organization led by Chris Valpone, who has been running Sales and Account Management for Fidessa in North America for the last 9 years. As part of this structure, new Account Management and New Business Sales teams have been put in place to address these changing needs, and plans are in place to further expand these teams going forward.

Heading up Account Management in North America is Doug Abere who brings a wealth of experience in looking after and growing business within a blue chip client base. Under Doug, this new team will bring a renewed focus to the buy-side client base and will be actively involved in supporting strategic initiatives and strengthening the firm's existing client relationships while promoting the new feature sets and enhanced functionality that are in the pipeline across the product suite.

Paul Neumaier is heading up the North American New Business Sales team. Paul has a proven track record of managing and winning new business for Fidessa in this region for over 6 years and has over 15 years of experience in selling multi-asset OMSs to both the buy-side and sell-side. Paul's team will leverage his experience, and together they will drive new business growth across the rapidly expanding product set that Fidessa is rolling out for the buy-side marketplace.

Megan Costello, President of Fidessa Buy-side in North America, commented: "We have invested heavily in our entire buy-side product suite in recent years, from our investment decision tools, through our powerful order generation and management solution Minerva, to compliance and post-trade. This latest version of the Minerva OMS delivers new, sophisticated functionality and ensures firms can trade across multiple regions with a centralized book and accommodate the most demanding and sophisticated workflow requirements on a desk-by-desk basis."

"Strengthening our sales function and expanding to a new office in the region clearly demonstrates our continued commitment to the buy-side space. In tandem with our rapidly growing product set, we will continue to meet the evolving needs of our client base as well as grow our share of the buy-side marketplace," concluded Costello.