Chicago-based Rival Systems, a trading software company established last year, announced today that Gator Trading, an operator of dozens of trading groups specializing primarily in futures and options, has successfully migrated onto the Rival Risk platform for all of its risk management needs.
Rival Risk is the first HTML-5 based enterprise risk management platform with an accurate real-time view into risk for firms executing across multiple front-ends and clearing firms.
With auto-reconciliation and real-time drop copies, the fully hosted solution provides users with a central repository for all of their trades and positions.
Users can connect to the secure platform from anywhere to easily monitor profit-and-loss (P&L) and risk across accounts, product categories and expirations, and drill down to each individual instrument.
Jason Widuch, Chief Operating Officer of Gator, said:
“We love the features we use on Rival Risk. Since each of our groups has its own account and own P&L, it was always a challenge to capture our real-time risk environment. On top of that, we are mainly a spread trading firm, and our old platform didn’t value our spreads accurately. That was the driving factor for moving to Rival Risk. It provides a much more accurate representation of where the spreads are priced and settled, which is critical for us.”
Risk managers are charged with calculating real-time P&L and risk for securities, even when there is not a liquid market. When trading futures spreads, P&L calculations depend on the price accuracy of both legs, presenting a significant challenge when the spread includes an illiquid back month.
To solve this challenge and others, Rival Systems developed proprietary algorithms that automatically calculate a reliable synthetic price when there is little or no trading activity.
Robert D’Arco, Rival Systems CEO, said:
“In today’s markets, it’s imperative for firms to have an accurate view into their enterprise risk at all times. Our proprietary algorithms, end of day reports and instant e-mail alerts have given executives the peace of mind and confidence needed to make critical business decisions. We’re excited to work with the team at Gator and other experts in the industry to help bring risk management back into the forefront.”
Widuch said: “Before we migrated onto Rival Risk we had to wait until statements came out at 1 a.m. to know our true P&L, but now we get an email at 3:45 p.m. with our preliminary settlement P&L by account and another email at 7:30 p.m. based on the final settlements.”
In addition to calculating real-time P&L and risk, users can also run custom price and volatility scenarios and option expiration reports across the entire firm.
Widuch added that service at Rival has been highly responsive. “We’ve been very impressed with the platform and the people. We had on-site training; it was thorough and a piece of cake, as far as we were concerned. Anything we’ve raised has been addressed immediately.”