Equity Options Trading Group Leverages Rival Trader and Rival API for Market-Making Strategies

CHICAGO, June 7, 2016 – Chicago-based Rival Systems (Rival), a trading software company established last year, today announced that Bracken, LLC has selected Rival as the platform for its equity options market-making business on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE).  Bracken is leveraging Rival Trader’s Electronic Eye and Auto-Quoting capabilities and building the group’s proprietary algorithmic strategies using Rival API.   Rival’s speed, customization, functionality and support were critical factors in Bracken’s decision to deploy the technology for all of its trading needs.

Jordan Meisner, a principal trader and partner of Chicago-based Bracken, said:  “In equity options market making, speed is essential. The hard data presented by Rival on its latency was great relative to our previous vendor and other competitors. The system is not only extremely fast but very customizable. We’ve been able to use the API to build, integrate and implement custom theoretical pricing models, while still leveraging the high performance of the Auto-Quoter and Electronic Eye.  The flexibility Rival offers with its API provides tremendous value to a smaller trading group like ours as we now have the ability to rapidly get our trading ideas and our own execution logic into production in a low latency platform. We can provide tight quotes and confidently quote high delta options or spreads in fast market opportunities without worrying about getting picked off.”

Rival Trader’s Auto-Quoter is a low latency market making engine, and the Electronic Eye allows users to define what orders to buy or sell automatically based on parameters they set around theoretical values.

Rival Systems CEO Robert D’Arco said:  “We’re delighted we could meet Bracken’s needs, particularly with the complex and extraordinarily competitive task of quoting equity options. These are exactly the types of challenges we strived to solve when we designed Rival Trader and Rival API. We’re committed to building out the advanced features and superior performance our users need to stay competitive.  We look forward to continuing to work very closely with the Bracken traders to ensure they have what they need to make optimal use of our software, and we will keep advancing the platform as their business grows.”

In addition to speed and performance, the support provided by the Rival team has exceeded Bracken’s expectations given the group’s experience with other software providers.

Meisner said:  “We can always get someone at Rival on the phone – whether it’s before, during or after the trading day – and we know they will get right on a task if we need something. We have regular meetings with the firm’s developers, and they follow through on every one of our action items. They make sure someone owns the task and provides realistic dates of deliverables so we know exactly where we stand and have someone to hold accountable who has made the task a priority.”

About Rival

Launched in 2015, Chicago-based Rival Systems (www.rivalsystems.com) empowers professional traders with the technology and resources required to compete in today’s markets. Rival provides a comprehensive technology solution, including: Rival Trader, a sophisticated derivatives trading system; Rival API, an algorithmic strategy development framework; Rival Risk, an enterprise risk management tool; and extensive support, training and service.  Rival Systems is positioned to become the preeminent provider of comprehensive technology solutions for the trading industry.

RIVAL PRESS CONTACT:

 

Sara Goodman, Director of Marketing

Rival Systems, 312-244-5903, marketing@rivalsystems.com