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Developer/CTA Interview
Brian Mehta
Chief Marketing Officer, Trading Technologies International, Inc. (TT)
Program(s) Developed: X_TRADER
Interview Date: December, 2015
Interviewed by William Gallwas, President of Striker Securities, Inc.
Trading Technologies (TT) sponsors of men's league ice hockey in western suburbs of Chicago. William Gallwas, who plays on the team, sat down to interview Brian Mehta about TT's tremendous nitch and success in the industry.
William Gallwas: Trading Technologies has been a leader in high-performance electronic trading since the first version of your most widely-known product, X_TRADER, debuted 1994. How has the company grown over the years and mission changed?

Brian Mehta: Just like the futures industry itself, Trading Technologies has evolved dramatically in its 21+ years. When TT was first founded, electronic trading was still in its infancy. The industry revolved around the trading pits, and one of our core missions was to advocate for electronic trading. Now, as you know, electronic trading dominates the industry, and TT has grown with it. Nineteen of the top 20 U.S. futures brokers are TT customers, and there are nearly 15,000 products tradable across numerous product types via our platforms - including futures, options on futures, fixed income products, and cleared and OTC energies. We've also expanded globally, with market connections and traders across five continents and TT offices in 10 countries. Our mission, though, is unchanged: to remain at the forefront of innovation and to provide users with the best possible platform to meet their needs.

William Gallwas: Who is your target user?

Brian Mehta: We service a wide variety of users across professional trading including proprietary traders, brokers, money managers, CTAs, hedge funds, and commercial hedgers and risk managers. With our new platform being accessible via the web, we've lowered the barrier to getting to our products, so we expect to further diversify our user base.

William Gallwas: Trading Technologies released its next-generation TT platform in March. What are the top benefits of the new TT platform?

Brian Mehta: Accessibility, speed, usability, flexibility and cost are some of the most important benefits of TT.

*Accessibility: The architecture of the new platform allows firms to quickly and easily set up new users, who can access TT from anywhere via virtually any internet-connected device. Users can start trading in seconds, and no software installation is required. TT is deployed from the cloud, so users are always on the latest version. All workspaces are stored in the cloud, which means traders can leave work and access the same workspaces from home or anywhere else. They can also view, chart and trade the markets from TT Mobile, which delivers professional-grade tools designed specifically for iOS and Android phones.

*Speed: We rebuilt the entire platform from the ground up to deliver improved performance. All of the latency-sensitive components run on Linux servers in colocated data centers. For example, Autospreader, which is one of X_TRADER's most popular features, is now twice as fast in TT, and further improvements are in development. And Autotrader, which ran on the client workstation in X_TRADER, is now deployed as an algo on our servers.

*Usability/flexibility: TT's simplified user interface provides a much more intuitive experience. At the same time, the platform is more customizable and more open. For example, users can customize the behavior of Autospreader for individual synthetic spreads with Autospreader Rules; they can create an algo that drives another algo in ADL; and they can access execution, third-party and bank algos that run outside the TT ecosystem.

*Cost: TT's software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment should deliver cost savings to the majority of our users. All of the functionality, including colocated execution and our new charting application with ten years of historical data, is available for a single price starting at just $50 per month.

William Gallwas: Are there any new features in the new platform?

Brian Mehta: The platform has more new features than we have room to cover here, so I'll just touch on some that have broad user appeal, starting with some of the new workspace features. Contextual search, which is unique to TT, allows users to search for instruments by symbol or product name. It makes workspace setup incredibly easy and fast. And traders can roll contracts without reconfiguring workspaces when contracts expire. TT leverages the cloud to store historical information. Users have indefinite access to historical time and sales and their own order and fill activity. This indefinite data storage allows firms that use TT to easily address many of their pressing compliance needs. TT also includes new charting functionality. For example, TT users get a number of new chart types and studies, and they'll soon have access to ten years of historical tick data. TT also provides enhanced Order Cross Prevention functionality to help prevent wash trades. The new Position Transfer feature allows users within the same group to transfer positions among themselves when their orders may otherwise match at a price on an exchange.

William Gallwas: What has the public reaction been like in TT's first eight months?

Brian Mehta: Feedback has been very positive so far. Some of the people we've talked to are excited about the speed of the new product, others are really pleased that there are no associated hosting fees, and still others are most happy about the "go anywhere" aspect of this platform, since that is consistent with the other technology in their lives. And everyone is excited that the new architecture will enable rapid innovation and response times that were previously unachievable. Anyone can try the new TT for free. All you need is an email address. Just go to trade.tt to create your account.

William Gallwas: How does the TT platform affect X_TRADER's future?

Brian Mehta: We'll continue to offer and support X_TRADER for the foreseeable future. We're still adding functionality, releasing upgrades and onboarding new customers. However, we expect TT will eventually replace X_TRADER as our customers discover the benefits of the new platform.
This interview is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a solicitation of any kind. Trade only with risk capital. The risk of trading can be substantial and each investor and/or trader must consider whether trading systems are a suitable investment.
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