Sidewinder, which is available immediately in the US and will soon be available in any global market in which the algorithm’s underlying functionality is supported, allows clients to customize execution style, benchmarks and participation rates.
It offers two modes – value mode, which increases participation rates when prices move towards the trader (decline for buyers and rise for sellers) and momentum mode, which allows the trader to buy into a rising market or sell into a falling market by increasing participation rates, and vice versa.
Sidewinder can also be pegged to the widening or tightening of the spread between two stocks or between a stock and an ETF. Additionally, Sidewinder uses Instinet’s SmartRouter to seek liquidity in major displayed liquidity pools in the US, and can be set to exclude block prints from its view of the market to avoid chasing inaccessible volume.
Truly useful algorithms mimic what any good trader would do intuitively, while at the same time making the trading process more efficient, said Michael Plunkett, president of North America at Instinet. We developed Sidewinder with this goal in mind, attempting to enable both value and momentum traders to dynamically adjust their volume participation levels based on changing market conditions.
Sidewinder, which is available through Instinet’s trading platforms – Newport and Instinet Trading Portal – or via partner systems, becomes the twelfth algorithm in Instinet’s suite of global trading strategies. These include scheduling algorithms, such as Wizard, Wizard PRO, Global VWAP or Volume Participation; investment strategy-specific algorithms for pairs trading and risk arbitrage; and intelligent access algorithms, such as BlockPeg, Cobra and Nighthawk.
