System and method for holding and sending an order to a matching engine

#The present invention relates to electronic trading. More specifically, the present invention relates to displaying market information on a screen.

#An electronic exchange provides an automatic matching process between buyers and sellers, also referred to herein as traders. In particular, traders connect to an electronic exchange over a communication link. If necessary, a gateway is sometimes used to connect the trader with the electronic exchange. Once a trader is connected, the electronic exchange can broadcast its data feed to the traders over the communication link. Subsequently, the traders receive the data feed, in one form or another, and their computers process the information. Traders may respond by sending orders to buy or sell the tradeable object. When the electronic exchange receives an order, it may check the limits of the order, for example price and quantity, and prioritize the order in its electronic order book. When buy and sell orders match, a trade occurs and information relating to the trade is relayed back to the traders' computers.

#As used herein, a tradeable object simply refers to anything that can be traded with a price and/or quantity. Examples of tradeable objects may include, but are not limited to, all types of traded events, goods and/or financial products, such as, for example, stocks, options, bonds, futures, currency, and warrants, as well as funds, derivatives and collections of the foregoing. Moreover, tradeable objects may include all types of commodities, such as grains, energy, and metals. A tradeable object may be “real”, such as products that are listed by an exchange for trading, or “synthetic”, such as a combination of real products that is created by the trader. A tradeable object could actually be a combination of other tradeable objects, such as a class of tradeable objects.

#Many aspects of the preferred embodiments may be better understood with reference to the following drawings. The components in the drawings are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead being placed upon illustrating example embodiments.

#FIG. 1 illustrates an overview of an example trading system configuration, in accordance with the preferred embodiments, used to relay market information to a variety of trading terminals;

#FIG. 2 illustrates an example message flow diagram used to illustrate aspects of the preferred embodiments;

#I. Overview

#The preferred embodiments are appropriate for use in an electronic trading setting, and particularly with an electronic exchange that automatically matches buy and sell orders. As described with reference to the accompanying figures, the preferred embodiments are provided to, among other things, facilitate fast and responsive order entry.

#In one aspect of the preferred embodiments, a user can submit an order request through a trading application, only the order request is not actually sent to be matched at the exchange. Instead, the order request is placed in a temporary holding place. A temporarily held order is referred to herein as a “virtual order,” because at this point the order request has not been released to the exchange's matching engine.