Tapaas Alerts and Notifications Service is an essential feature of our complete Forex Risk Management solution for Brokers.  This service continually monitors trading and market activity in real-time. It identifies incidents and events which urgently need to be brought to the attention of a broker’s dealing team and enables immediate action for resolution.  The Alerts and Notifications Service comes with a comprehensive collection of out-of-the-box alerts. But, we also endeavour to respond rapidly to new requirements from our clients and ever-changing market conditions.

I am sharing this story about our newest Trading Volume Burst Alert and how it came about because I think it illustrates the power of the Tapaas platform and how it enables us to be extremely responsive to new customer requirements.  

Syndicate Trading and Volume Bursts

So, we are of one such case where we learned of a need for rapidly identifying incidents of a large group or syndicate of coordinated trading activity which can be detrimental to the broker’s PnL.

Recently, I have had many conversations with existing clients and prospective clients about their needs and challenges many of them have experienced while growing their business in China.  Like every new market, there are many new challenges brokers encounter when they acquire clients in China. One which I hear about frequently is the prevalence of what some call trading syndicates or groups of individuals who’ve been engaged to open accounts across several brokers and are used to execute coordinated trading strategies.  

One day, I was having this very conversation with a prospective client and discussing how we could help.  The very next day, we received a call from a rather distressed existing customer, who had just been hit by such syndicate traders and experienced a substantial PnL impact.  This was clearly an opportunity for us to help.

Data Analytics Process for New Alerts

There are many techniques for developing alerts.  Sometimes it is based on experience in financial markets and intuition.  Other times it could be a Machine Learning method for identifying which factors are leading indicators of a certain outcome we are aiming to detect and alerting when those factors are present.  In this case, we had a list of accounts which were known to have participated in the incident. So, we analysed the historical trading activity over several months to identify any detectable patterns which could serve as an early warning next time.

New Burst Alert

Within about 8 hours from receiving the call, our team came up with a new alert.  The Burst Alert continuously monitors trading volume by symbol and alerts when volume in any given symbol, measured in USD, exceeds a threshold considered abnormal.  With the alert comes a list of accounts that have recently traded the symbol(s) whose volumes just triggered the Burst Alert.

The format of the mail is similar to our other Risk Publisher Alerts in that it includes Action Links.  The Action Links enable a Dealer to take immediate Action from the Alert.  In this case, the Dealer can Switch to STP all or individually listed accounts.  Depending on the type of alert, there will be an Action Link which can either navigate to a relevant dashboard for further investigation or execute an Action directly.  In this case, the Switch to STP is implemented by Tapaas communicating directly with the oneZero API.

Tapaas Extras

At Tapaas, in addition to addressing the immediate customer need, we always take things a bit further.  We look carefully at the problem that was just solved and at the solution we developed and ponder about what if and what else about variations on the problem and what else the solution can address.  We call the result, Tapaas Extras. These are advanced modules and tools we develop for those customers who want to take things further and really optimise their business.

Copy Trade Analytics Dashboard

The Copy Trade Analytics Dashboard is an example of a Tapaas Extra.  We think it’s a very exciting tool and the uses of it have not even been fully explored yet.

If you’d like to learn more, please contact us