Horizon Software announced today that Paris-based algorithmic prop house Alize Trading has gone live with Horizon Platform to develop its algorithmic trading business.

Bruno Morel, Head of IT at Alize Trading, says: “There were two key factors in our choosing Horizon’s trading platform. The first was the ability to tailor the platform to the needs of smaller operations. The second was the flexibility to widen the scope of the system, as and when needed.”

He adds: “Horizon’s constantly improving connectivity to exchanges in the Americas, Europe and Asia were also of real benefit. The platform’s functionality and built-in features helped us to recreate sophisticated features and code our algorithmic strategies for statistical arbitrage using Horizon Algo Designer very quickly. This meant that we were able to get the system into production very quickly.”

CEO of Electronic Trading at Horizon Software, Sylvain Thieullent, says: “The algorithmic trading software used by Alize is the result of almost 20 years of Horizon’s R&D in front-office trading. For Alize the ability to access the full depth of features of our platform was a major advantage. Horizon’s 70+ native gateways to exchanges worldwide give our clients the flexibility which is essential for high frequency trading (HFT) and access to brokers for algorithmic trading.”

Horizon provides a user interface which gives its clients the ability to code trading algorithms in SCALA (a functional, object-oriented programming language) and run them on servers for HFT. The scalability of Horizon’s algorithmic trading software allows smaller proprietary trading firms to start trading with just a few exchanges, and to broaden their scope of operation as the business grows.

Horizon provides a native exchange gateway for market data and connectivity to third party vendors for algorithmic trading.

Horizon Software has offices in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, providing algorithmic trading software to a wide range of financial institutions, including investment firms, exchanges, proprietary trading houses and some of the world’s largest investment banks.