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About the Trade Manager

The Trade Manager is designed to further the overall objective of integrated trading, which is to reduce the time and effort it takes between a trading decision and the actual trade.

The ladder, also known as Depth of Market (DOM), is the main part of the Trade Manager. The DOM visualizes the trading process and permits users to execute trades with a single click.

As you can see in the image shown above, the display is fixed around the best bid, which is located in the center of the display. Using the Trade Manager, you can more quickly and accurately gauge liquidity.

The Benefits of Visualizing Liquidity

The Price column is between the Bid and the Ask columns. Both the Bid and Ask columns display liquidity added from other market participants by showing the aggregate number of shares or contracts (for instance, "size") to buy or sell at the corresponding price level of the Price column.

Benefit 1: Visualizing Imbalance: The aggregate size at each price can be displayed numerically, as a histogram or a bar, which gives an immediate sense of liquidity and potential imbalances that could affect market direction -- especially if traders start removing liquidity.

Benefit 2: Judging Market Impact: "Look before you leap" can be applied when you are trying to decide to get into or out of the market. The Trade Manager lets you quickly see if one side of the book has more or less liquidity (or size) than the other, sort of as if you're at the deep or shallow end before diving in.

Because size means liquidity, using the Trade Manager, especially with eSignal's Level II, or Market Depth, traders can more easily judge how difficult it might be to open or close a large position close to the best bid and best offer (BBO).

Once in a position, you are now able to manage it better, with the Trade Manager's unique P&L gauge and powerful bracket trades. The P&L is displayed as the number of green or red price levels it would take to close the position out at a profit or loss, respectively.

Watch a video about Trading Integration that includes information about the Trade Manager window.