Building an Algorithmic Trading Strategy Without a Single Line of Code

Designing execution strategies according to clients' needs and preferences is one of the most valuable services an execution desk offers, but customizations typically require weeks in a development queue. AMS One is a global execution platform for equities and futures that comes with a suite of high-performance execution algorithms that can be customized or built from scratch in a point-and-click interface.

To create a strategy, a complete build is a short series of decisions, illustrated in the steps below:

1. Get started. Click "Create" to begin a new strategy or "Create from" to copy an existing one.

1. Set the schedule. Select how the strategy should pace trading across the life of an order. Choose between VWAP, TWAP, Close, POV (VP) or Optimal for a custom liquidity seeking strategy.
2. Specify algo behavior. Determine whether orders must complete, whether they'll be guided by momentum/reversion, and how to participate in equities auctions (if at all).

1. Decide how to interact with venues. Choose whether the strategy participates on lit exchanges and in dark venues, which tactics to engage, and how.
2. Select routing strategies. Choose routing strategies to assign to each tactic, assigning one of the defaults or one of your own design.

Editing an existing strategy also happens in clicks. Here are a few examples, illustrated in the image below.

• To keep a strategy out of the opening auction, open the strategy, click the opening auction toggle off, and save.

• Turn off lit markets so a strategy trades only in the dark in two clicks by opening, toggling lit passive and opportunistic off, and saving.

The same goes for changing participation rate, adding a volume cap, changing closing auction participation, switching to a schedule that accounts for volatility, building a completely custom routing strategy, or simply adding or removing venues.

And users can build just about any strategy without having to design child order pricing logic from heuristics. Users don't have to configure rules about when and how child orders will be sized and priced or specify timing for order repricing. Our research-driven algorithm foundations, including our limit order placement model, support every algorithm, whether our design or yours, for trading every instrument. While users can choose to configure custom pricing rules, we've spent a lot of time building our order placement based on empirical data around the signature behaviors of each traded instrument. That means you can count on high-performing algorithms from day one, customizing only the parts you need.

To customize more advanced behaviors, users can tune more than 150 parameters spanning scheduling, clean-up, smart order routing, benchmark behavior, order placement, and order sizing. In the advanced parameters screen, users can search parameters, read their descriptions, and view related parameters for more complex behaviors.

With AMS One's Strategy Studio, the time required for strategy design is spent only on deciding what you want, because the change itself is just a click or two. And every edit can be ready for trading the next day. Your customizations can go as deep as a client's needs and preferences require, changing nearly everything or nothing at all. In either case, AMS One provides a complete suite of execution strategies that supports the performance of hundreds of clients, managed in a single workflow, with platform-wide or client-specific algorithms built in minutes.

AMS One is a global, multi-asset algorithmic execution platform from BestEx Research, combining high-performance algorithms, routing, customization, monitoring, analytics, and TCA in a single, cloud-based platform. Its all-inclusive subscription includes market data, venue connectivity, and ongoing maintenance, so a firm can deploy institutional-grade execution technology without the traditional eight-figure infrastructure investment.