Iguana2

Sydney: A revolutionary market information platform for ASX and NZX professionals has been launched today, providing a clear trading advantage for users.

Spark is a desktop application that provides users with a comprehensive suite of ASX and NZX market information tools, including real-time depth, data visualisations, market playback, tick charting, market scanning, company news and data exporting functions.

“Spark has been developed by Iguana2 over the last four years and we are certain that it’s the most sophisticated market information platform available today,” Adam Rands, Chief Operating Officer Iguana2, said.

“Spark offers broking houses and wealth managers in Australia and New Zealand a viable alternative platform for the region,” Rands said.

According to Rands, Spark is simple to use, yet advanced in its functionality.

“The recurrent theme with all of Spark’s tools is a focus on usability and the clear communication of market activity,” Rands said.

“Trading movements and changes are presented with the intelligent use of animation, colour, transitions, shading and scroll speeds. The use of these elements conveys subtle, yet highly valuable information and enables users to actively monitor more stocks.”

Through its innovative market depth visualisation tools, Spark users can quickly analyse a stock’s current trading position and subsequent movements in the open order book. A unique playback function allows users to rewind the current or previous days and have the historical trading activity replayed at various speeds. This powerful feature allows users to test their theories on trading behavior and can help users to identify momentum shifts, support and resistance levels, dummy orders and the presence of algorithmic trading.

Spark is unashamedly different, says Rands.

“Spark’s development has been unencumbered by legacy software and systems. It is the next generation market information platform for the professional market and is fast, flexible and highly functional.”

“A key area where Iguana2 has focused heavily is the user interface for Spark,” Rands said.

“The typical approach of using a windows style MDI interface is not suited to streaming market data. Annoying pop-ups, drop-downs, menu/scroll bars and overlapping windows all take up valuable screen real-estate, and often get in the way of what’s actually important – the data. By developing our own purpose built user interface, market data takes centre stage and becomes accessible with unprecedented speed.”

And with the broking industry facing increased costs and declining revenue due to the ongoing financial crisis, Spark will offer the industry some relief with a competitive pricing model.

“Spark is a robust platform whose unique features will make it an indispensable application for equity market professionals,” said Rands.

”We’ve got a bold development roadmap for the inclusion of extra features and functionality over the coming quarters and we expect Spark to gain quick acceptance with domestic brokers, hedge funds and wealth managers.”

For more information on Spark please visit:

http://iguana2.com/spark

- ENDS -

ABC - Caught by the short and curlies!

Tuesday, 26th of February 2008 is a day Eddy Groves would rather forget.

But Spark doesn’t forget. With Spark you can replay the last 30 days trading activity.

This video graphically depicts Eddy’s nightmarish morning at 60x speed. Each minutes trading activity is represented every second. On Monday ABC’s stock closed at $3.74, within seconds of opening on Tuesday morning it traded as low as $1.15.

A combination of margin calls and aggressive short selling by hedge funds decimated the stock which ultimately cost Eddy the company he founded 20 years earlier.

Watch the pre market trading activity before the market opens and then when ABC goes into suspension around 11am. The blue bar in the chart indicates the expected opening price and moves in response to the changes in the bid and offer queues.

Note - video quality has been reduced to make it web accessible.

One of the unique features in Spark is the way it presents market depth as a chart.

Spark’s depth charts visualises the outstanding order book for a stock by graphically depicting each buy and sell order.

Green bars represent the buyers and red bars, the sellers. The height of each bar indicates the aggregate volume of all the orders at a specific price level.

click image to watch video demonstration

As orders flow in and out of the order book and trading occurs the bars grow and contract. The chart animates these changes which over time, and with experience, can help you identify patterns in trading activity and potential trading opportunities.

Beyond displaying the current market depth, Spark also allows you to replay previous trading activity. You can access the last 30 days trading history and have the depth replayed to you at varying speeds.

This replay feature enables you to quickly establish a stock’s recent trading behaviour without having to constantly watch it in realtime. It can help to identify momentum shifts, support/resistance levels and the presence of algorithmic trading.

To see Spark’s market depth charts in action watch this short video presentation.

Spark is a streaming market information platform Iguana² has been developing over the last three years. It streams both ASX and NZX data and incorporates a number of unique trading tools not seen before.

The Spark development is now complete but before we officially launch the service we want to conduct some final user testing.

We are seeking interested people who are willing to run and test Spark over the next few weeks. Testers will be amongst the first people to use Spark, a market information platform we believe is superior to all others available in the Australian market. We will provide Spark for free during the test period and will offer testers a reduced subscription rate should they want to subscribe in the future.

If you’re interested in helping us out send a message via our contact form.

An Iguana² representative will respond and provide you with further details.

Testers must

• be able to spend 45-60 minutes at our Sydney CBD based office to undertake initial training
• be, or have been, an active ASX equities trader
• have previous experience with other streaming market data services like Iress, BourseData, Pulse, ComSec Pro or Etrade Pro
• have access to your own PC and internet connection.
• be willing to submit bug reports and feedback if a problem is encountered