An automated trading system (ATS) is a computer trading program that automatically submits trades to an exchange. As of the year 2010 more than 70% of the stock shares traded on the NYSE and NASDAQ are generated from automated trading systems. They are designed to trade stocks, futures and forex based on a predefined set of rules which determine when to enter a trade, when to exit it and how much to invest in it.
An example of an early ATS is Instinet. This allows traders to input trades invisibly to the market, with a crossing price determined by a VWAP measure. Instinet also enables anonymous conversations and negotiations to take place between bidders, and so reduces informational costs to the participants.
Trading system designers / programmers often test their automated trading systems on historical or current market data in order to determine whether the underlying algorithm guiding the system is profitable or not. Backtesting software are special trading platforms which enable trading system designer to develop and test their trading systems on historical market data while aiming to produce optimal historical results.
Famous quotes containing the words automated, trading and/or system:
“Now, as always, the most automated appliance in a household is the mother.”
—Beverly Jones (b. 1927)
“His farm was “grounds,” and not a farm at all;
His house among the local sheds and shanties
Rose like a factor’s at a trading station.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)