Lucera Introduces LumeFX to Address Fragmentation and Liquidity Management Issues in the Electronic Spot FX Market

NEW YORK, May 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Lucera Financial Infrastructures today announced the launch of LumeFX, its  technology platform built to address the unique networking and liquidity challenges in the global FX spot market. LumeFX consolidates fragmented FX trading onto a single platform, using an adaptive smart order router (SOR) to identify liquidity and facilitate high-quality, and efficient executions. LumeFX runs on Lucera's high-performance infrastructure providing rapid connectivity to the FX spot market, reducing clients' infrastructure costs and improving performance, and reliability of their trades. 

"LumeFX provides a high-performance, mission critical system that benefits from Lucera's on-demand infrastructure offering. Coupled with Lucera's on-demand compute capacity and software defined networks (SDNs), the design of LumeFX enables our customers to scale their compute needs with their business demands," said Peter Durkan, CTO, Lucera.

"LumeFX gives us more control over our FX spot trading and helps us to better understand the best liquidity provider for a trade and to better manage our order flow with measurable efficiency and accuracy," said James Reilly, Senior Managing Director and Global Head of Foreign Exchange Sales and Trading at Cantor Fitzgerald Securities. "LumeFX and Lucera manage all the infrastructure and networking, so we can focus on optimizing our order flow."

"Although FX is the largest and most liquid market, it is also quite fragmented. Historical microstructures, like "last look" pose a unique challenge for liquidity takers in understanding real versus phantom liquidity. As FX trading becomes increasingly automated and more companies look to test FX strategies, these challenges need to be addressed to remain competitive," added Mr. Durkan. "LumeFX was engineered to help solve these unique FX trading challenges and to empower firms to accelerate their business."

Key features of the LumeFX platform include:

• LumeFX matches aggregated liquidity using its SOR while continuously refining and optimizing flow based on internal metrics and machine learning algorithms. It provides automatic performance-based flow allocation to liquidity providers. Expert resources are available to create customized trading strategies to help better manage order flow.
• LumeFX helps to control all aspects of client interaction and is engineered to help dynamically allocate liquidity, manage routing parameters and control cost on a per counterparty, per currency pair basis. Real-time spread management dynamically customizes pricing configuration for both Makers and Takers of liquidity, and algorithms provide a combined view of external liquidity and internal algorithmic executions services.
• LumeFX utilizes a high-performance FIX engine supporting all FIX versions as well as a customized network built for speed and reliability. It delivers access to banks, electronic communication networks (ECNs), marketplaces and customers via high-speed, high-performance dark fiber cross connects for virtually unlimited global connectivity and trading.

LumeFX is co-located in Equinix facilities in New York (NY4), London (LD4) and Chicago (Cermak), each platform participant runs on its own dedicated machine instance designed to maximize performance and eliminate central-server bottlenecks. New instances of the LumeFX platform are deployed rapidly, and system operators can immediately begin configuring liquidity for their global FX spot business through an intuitive and simple web-based interface.

About Lucera
Lucera Financial Infrastructures, LLC is a premier provider of on-demand, scalable high-performance infrastructure designed to power electronic connectivity and trading. Lucera's fast, open and intuitive platform is engineered to enable customers to securely leverage our powerful, high-speed and resilient electronic trading infrastructure. We empower our customers with on-demand provisioning and transparency that help them enhance performance, lower cost of operations and provide best in class service.

Lucera is a privately held, New York based firm launched with initial backing from Cantor Fitzgerald, a leading global financial services firm and active Lucera customer. Visit us at https://luceraHQ.com.

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SOURCE Lucera Financial Infrastructures