Los Angeles-based Quotron Systems Inc, now a subsidiary of CitiCorp, has enhanced its six-month old F/X Trader foreign exchange dealing system. The new software release, Version 1.4, which is automatically available free of charge to existing users, enables dealers to enter a buy, sell, do nothing, or interrupt command with a single keystroke, regardless of whether they communicate with counterparties in fixed-format or free-form conversation mode. The system maintains an audit trail of all transactions and conversations completed, and prints them automatically. When traders conduct conversations in free-form, or conversational mode, the conversational panel accommodates long dialogues by expanding into a lower, inactive panel and the conversation appears in two colours to distinguish incoming text from outgoing text. The indicative rates now include cross rates which are calculated by Quotron, and the bid and ask rates are now enlarged for at-a-glance recognition. And the custom keyboard features an audible alarm that alerts traders of incoming calls, and signals when prices come back to traders who have requested a price quote. Quotron’s F/X Trader, which with installation and training takes four weeks to get up and running, runs under OS/2 and Presentation Manager on IBM PS/2 Model 70 workstations at each trader’s desk, with DEC’s MicroVAX 3100 used as the controller under VMS with DECNet communication equipment installed on customers’ premises and throughout Quotron’s dedicated global network (CI No 1,426). Quotron’s monthly lease charges for a turnkey system are UKP1,700 for the first terminal, and UKP1,100 for the second. The company’s largest installation to date has been eight terminals. It says that 78 banks worlwide currently use F/X Trader – a drop in the ocean compared to Reuters’ 12,000 installations perhaps, but Quotron is confident that the market is big enough for two players – all it has to do now is overtake Dow Jones’ Telerate subsidiary, which has 150 of its TTS systems in place. But, at its present rate of 12 to 20 new bank installations per month, Quotron is confident that it will be the market’s second player, especially as its system offers six simultaneous conversations, against the four enabled by Telerate and Reuters. Behind Quotron’s claim that it isn’t aiming to buy the foreign exchange computerised systems market, lies the fact that all of Quotron’s customers already have Reuters systems installed – Quotron’s tactic is to present its product as a bank’s second system, a safeguard against system failure, as opposed to an alternative to Reuters.
