The THESEUS project (Terminal at High speed for European Stock Exchange Users) has focused on the development of a terminal which could become a key component of a high speed financial network system, able to meet the telecommunication requirements of a unified European capital market.
By a set of trials, THESEUS has built and has validated the main components of an innovating ATM based experimental system, fulfilling the requirements of a pan-European Stock Exchange network.
In order to establish an ATM link between Stock Exchanges and remote users, it is necessary to have at one's disposal a dedicated terminal supporting the trading applications and providing ATM access, and to adapt the front-ends of the existing Stock Exchange processing systems to the ATM protocols.
The software design is based on the following principles:
client / server oriented, running with Windows NT 4.0
object modelling oriented
WinSock 2 API used as network interface.
The current state of the art in the stock trading technology is the use of UNIX or NT based client server applications with graphical interfaces, which is the case of the THESEUS terminal.
From the user point of view, the terminal is characterised by a multi-windowing Graphical User Interface, permitting the use of a unique application for trades with any European Stock Exchange.
The prototypes developed in the frame of THESEUS exist in two versions:
The basic version, which implements:
all the interactive functions that are necessary to process buying and selling orders
all the consultation functions that exploit the real-time market feed disseminated by Stock Exchanges
gateway functions.
The multimedia version implements, in addition, videoconferencing services, named Price Display application, which:
enables a trader to negotiate directly with his counterpart
enables to restore the floor atmosphere which has been lost with the arrival of electronic trading systems (this service can also be defined as a virtual outcry service).
The Price Display application implements:
- a software which enables a broker to propose stock prices associated to his identity
an integrated service managing real-time videoconferencing services between two brokers or between a broker and a surveillance PC.