WHAT WE DO
Since 2010, Touch-Fire Trading has pioneered a stream of innovative, regulated-market solutions for exchanges, brokers, and financial institutions. We go beyond providing software - we partner with you to create large-scale custom solutions tailored to your unique challenges. Through our center of excellence for Fintech development, and our robust development framework, our specialist teams ensure cutting-edge technology and compliance driven approaches for every project.
TRADITIONAL EXCHANGES
Futures Exchange solutions and initiatives to improve efficieny.
MARKETPLACE SOLUTIONS
From individual components to complete end to end Marketplace solutions, such as carbon credit markets etc.
BROKER SOLUTIONS
From order routing and risk management to mid-office/back office solutions. Offering Tier 1 level solutions at a much lower price point.
OUR ARCHITECTURE
Our solutions are based on a common high performance architecture designed to cover all of the requirements expected in regulated financial institutions. Touchfire has been supporting different business models through the years, and keeping up. We believe in innovation and continuous improvement to achieve sustainability and deliver timely and operative solutions.
VIEW OUR JOURNEY TO THE CLOUDCUSTOM SOLUTIONS AND MARKETPLACE CONSULTING
Our team of senior partners has over 30 years of experience building solutions for exchanges, brokers, and marketplaces. We can help you with projects of all sizes and complexity, from designing a new marketplace to integrating our solutions with your existing systems.
Benefits
- Save time and money by leveraging our expertise and experience.
- Get a custom solution that meets your specific needs and requirements.
- Reduce the risk of project failure by working with a team of experts.
- Improve your operational efficiency and scalability.
- Meet the needs of increasingly diligent regulators.
MARKETPLACE CONSULTING
Because not every marketplace is the same!
We can help you design a marketplace solution for your particular vision including ECNs, MTFs, Crossing networks, Dark Pools, centralised exchanges and OTC hybrid matching solutions. We can help identify how these solutions can add value to your marketplace ecosystems while navigating complex regulations.CUSTOM SOLUTIONS
With dedicated project-focused development squads, and a live operations team supporting multiple customers in regulated financial service environments, Touch-Fire Trading is equipped to support new, exploratory initiatives or existing exchange/broker transformations.
We blend proven components from our solution library with bespoke integrations and feature enhancements, delivering tailored systems at a price comparable to off-the-shelf products—yet fully adaptable to your evolving needs.
CASE STUDIES
EXCHANGE PLATFORM TRANSITION STRATEGY
POSITION MANAGEMENT AND TRAINING SYSTEM
LARGE EXCHANGE NEEDED TO TRANSITION TO NEW EXCHANGE IN A VERY SHORT TIME FRAME
The Tokyo Grain Exchange was facing a financial decline, and
needed to merge its processing functions into the Tokyo
Commodity Exchange (Tocom). The challenge was how all of the
open positions (outstanding contracts) from the over 50
clearing members, could be converted by all of the members
and transferred across to the Nasdaq OMX platform at Tocom,
within the 90 minute gap in trading at the Tocom exchange.
Being a previous customer who saw us deliver new
functionality over the web quickly and securely, Touch-Fire
again took on this project by building a user front end
where members could do position allocation, verification and
exchange monitoring. A back end integration with the Nasdaq
OMX clearing system was also built to execute the transfer.
After several dry runs with all members present, the
migration process was run for real, without any problems, on
the last day of the year, 2010. This project allowed the
exchange to smoothly transition to the new platform within a
short span of time and in the most cost effective manner.
INTERNAL MATCHNG ENGINE FOR RETAIL TRADING
OFF-EXCHANGE MARKETPLACE
HEDGE FUND WANTED TO BACK OFF-EXCHANGE TRADING AT HIGH VOLUME, LOW TRANSACTION FEES
A broker had a large hedge fund client who was willing to
become the counterparty to off- exchange trading to retail
traders. The regulations in Japan had recently been changed
to allow off-exchange trading for futures. If they could
match up these two, their retail customers would get better
pricing than available at the exchange, and the broker would
not have to pay the exchange the execution fees.
Touch-Fire built a solution closely with the broker, which
would perform the matching of orders, but would also work in
tandem with the primary market, apply the same price limits,
and register any trades to the post trade registration
system. Later enhancements to this included smart order
routing functionality that would sweep the internal market
before forwarding the remainder to the primary market.
The benefit to the retail customer was better pricing than
was available on the live exchange (typically quoted 1 yen
better). The benefit to the hedge fund was a lower cost and
higher volume order flow to match against. The benefit to
the broker was increased execution volume and therefore
commissions, and reduced execution costs on the
transactions.
HIGH FREQUENCY TRADING SOLUTION
HIGH SPEED FIFO POSITION MANAGEMENT
BROKER NEEDED TO MANAGE A LARGE HFT CLIENT
A new FX client of a Japanese brokerage wished to trade at a
far higher volume than the broker’s existing system could
support. Furthermore, the client requested other
functionalities specific to their trading practices and
specific type of clearing required by this market. Most of
the existing systems available could not deal with these
requirements. Touch-Fire had the closest possible system
with its new low latency FIX based routing engine
The first project phase dealt with the creation of a high
volume clearing platform that could deal with the
intricacies of this market (daily rollover, swap interest
payments, multi- currency etc.), while also assisting the
exchange to define a new clearing interface (FIFO). A set of
FIX protocol based connections was also built to allow
monitoring of all client order flow to the exchange, also
order control in case of client system failure.
The solution went live in October 2012, and the client
ramped up their order flow from 12 orders per day on day
one, to over half a million orders per day on day 6. By
implementing this solution, the broker became the only
member of the exchange able to offer HFT trading on this
market to overseas traders. The exchange also benefited with
their trading volume effectively doubling overnight with the
new activity.
FULL BROKER EXCHANGE SOLUTION
TFX On Exchange FX and CFD trading
The broker had a customer who wished to trade as a market
maker on the TFX. Trading continuously for 23 hours per day.
Grew from 12 orders per day, up to 300,000 per day in just 6
days. Clearing interface, including Swap, daily rollovers,
and merging external vendor data
Touch-Fire built a solution covering all the order routing
and drop copy requirements, as well as Clearing interface,
including FX Swaps, CFD Interest rate and dividend rates,
daily rollovers, and end of day clearing and regulatory
reporting.
This solution became the core of the broker institutional
business, and saw them rapidly grow their position in the
industry. The updates implemented on the exchange side,
allowed new market makers to join the exchange, making it,
to this day, a far more competitive marketplace.
BROKER SOLUTION FOR HFT TRADING
Broker needed to manage a large HFT client
The broker had existing systems to support retail trading
onto the Osaka Stock Exchange FX marketplace (OSE-FX).
However, this new client wished to trade a far higher volume
than the existing system could support. Given the high
number of transactions, the broker also needed to be able to
monitor the trading in real time, and receive alerts on
exceptions. The solution also had to support both client
level clearing and broker level clearing.
The first phase of this project was to create a high volume
clearing platform, that could deal with the intricacies of
this market (such as rounding issues and Fx conversion
timing etc). The system was run in parallel with an existing
retail solution for three months to iron out issues. At the
same time we had to meet with the exchange to assist them to
define a Fifo based clearing interface, which had not been
used in this market before.
With this solution built and tested, it went live in October
2012, and the client ramped up their order flow from 12
orders per day on day one, to over half a million orders per
day on day 6. By implementing this solution, the broker
became the only member of the exchange able to offer HFT
trading on this market to overseas traders, and benefitted
from this new business. The exchange also benefited, as
their trading volume effectively doubled overnight with the
new activity.
OTC Broker
LIQUIDITY PROVIDER AGGREGATION AND HEDGING SOLUTION
Broker needed to improve price spreads
The broker was operating a widely used crypto wallet,
offering Crypto trading in JPY. However, market making
pricing was much more competitive in USD. They therefore
wanted a solution to aggregate quotes from multiple sources
(both JPY and USD) and hedge these USD trades in real-time.
The solution provided by TF was a matching engine that was
able to apply aggregrate FX conversion books to any source
books, and generate prices in JPY, and then hedge resulting
JPY trades across any number of legs.
Following the implementation, the customer was able to chose
liquidity providers from any of the available international
LPs.
