System and method for listing offerings of commercial paper and other interests

Abstract

A system and method for electronically evaluating and trading CP and short-term interests is presented. The system includes a buyer terminal coupled to a trading system. The buyer terminal includes a display device for displaying offerings of the interests and an input device for entering one or more investment criteria. The system includes a data store of offerings of a plurality of trading parties (e.g., issuers and / or dealers). The system also includes a server implementing search engine functions for selectively identifying responsive offerings and retrieving from the data store information relating to the responsive offerings of the plurality of trading parties. The system transmits the retrieved offerings information to the buyer terminal for display. Preferably, the offerings information of at least two trading parties is displayed in an integrated fashion. The system may present a summary view of the offerings information with a count of the identified offerings of each of the trading parties. The investment criteria include buyer-defined values for terms of the offerings such as, for example, maturity, minimum size, minimum yield and credit ratings of the interests. The investment criteria may also include parameters that specify an order for displaying the retrieved offerings. A method for electronically evaluating short-term interests includes the steps of: entering investment criteria; selectively retrieving offerings information from a plurality of trading parties responsive to the investment criteria; and presenting an integrated display of the retrieved offerings information. In one embodiment, investment criteria may be stored. The stored criteria may be retrieved and applied to identify offerings of the plurality of trading parties such that current offerings of the interests may be identified over a period of time.

Description

COPYRIGHT NOTICE [0001] A portion of the patent disclosure document contains material subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] The invention relates to electronic systems and methods for facilitating trading, and for trading commercial paper (“CP”) and other short-term interests. [0003] CP is an unsecured promissory note issued by a corporation (e.g., financial, industrial, public) or a municipality to pay a stated amount on a stated maturity date not more than 270 days from issue. CP is typically issued with very short maturity, e.g., less than 30 days. There is both a primary and secondary market for CP. In the primary market, CP is issued directly by the issuing corporation or municipality, or by ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015] In a preferred embodiment, the summary presentation lists each trading party with a responsive offering together with the number of responsive offerings and, preferably, with the highest yield for the responsive offerings of each trading party. Also, in a preferred embodiment, the summary presentation may sort retrievals or search results in accordance with any appropriate sorting criterion or criteria, e.g., by the number of offerings responsive to the query or by yield. This enables one to scan a presentation and quickly prioritize review of offerings.

[0017] Further, the inventive computer system and method provide for navigating through a summary display on a computer controlled display device to view individual offerings and information of any trading party with one or more offerings responsive to the query. These features enable a buyer to prioritize a selection of offerings and, thus, complete transactions more efficiently.

[0020] In one embodiment, the inventive computer system and method may permit authorized traders within a buyer's firm to specify a subset of trading parties from which traders from that firm can buy. In this embodiment, not every person authorized to trade in a buyer's firm need be enabled to view and execute all offerings of a particular trading party.

Problems solved by technology

Nevertheless, the number of daily CP offerings is quite large and buyers, e.g., money market portfolio managers, must preview large numbers of offerings from numerous dealers to evaluate price and yield levels and to determine competitive offerings.

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