Global Trader now offers EQ Trader, a Contracts for Difference (CFD) trading platform.
According to James Saulez, CTO of Global Trader, the platform allows traders to navigate through JSE equities which can be traded as CFDs.
“It also allows one to add them to your personalised market watch lists where you effectively watch the live price movements and other key proprietary indicators, and view all of these on an interactive ticker,” he adds.
According to Saulez, this platform also allows investors to request to trade, buy or sell right away, place an order with conditions, view and amend orders, view real-time account and portfolio valuations, as well as view live SENS announcements and important messaging from Global Trade's trading desk.
Phased approach
The company says the platform will be rolled out in two phases. EQ Trader is busy with phase one of a major overhaul of the company's seven-year-old Java-based CFD platform. “We needed to improve this platform in line with our user experience vision, which fundamentally challenges the way online financial brokers provide end-to-end customer experiences,” says Saulez.
Internet Solutions' new virtualised managed hosting environment, he explains. “This was in order to improve response times and address infrastructure issues stemming from a traditional physical server model, which was becoming tough to manage and inflexible.”
Taking advantage of Thomson Reuters' improved exchange pricing infrastructure in SA was another objective, notes Saulez. Before this offering it was not possible to consume live price feeds off numerous international exchanges via a high-speed, resilient infrastructure from a local vendor.
He says another aim was to make the interface easier to use by improving the look and feel and general usability. “We also wanted to provide new functionality geared at empowering our customers with greater decision support and information.”
Trading tools
With this in mind, says Saulez, Global Trader has created a 'What's stopping you?' Web site. This is a way for anyone to assess where they are in the journey towards investing for themselves, as well as providing feedback on factors they believe are inhibiting them from taking greater control, he adds.
Saulez reveals that an updated Web site will be unveiled in January 2010, with two additions. The first is Global Trader University, a learning and knowledge base offering aimed at beginner through to expert, with a broad curriculum. The second is Global Trader Community, a community portal for its customers offering the opportunity to socially network around their investment activities.
Saulez says Global Trader's new international trading platform (GTi Trader) goes live in 2010, to provide true global market access to foreigners and South Africans with offshore bank accounts.
“Our new Spread Trading Platform will also be unveiled with a similar look and feel and usability to EQ Trader.”
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