The advent of certain types of trading has narrowed the spread between available best bids and best offers (defined below), which may decrease profits available to market participants. Additionally, the prices of markets may change significantly relative to bid-offer spreads, which could lead to unexpected losses for market participants. These (and other) factors may decrease available liquidity at the best bid and offer prices. As a result, orders (particularly large orders) may expect to receive prices differing from the best bid or best offer prices. Due to the lack of price predictability, market participants making certain types of orders must price these orders by manually contacting other market participants. This manual pricing process is inherently slow and error-prone. Additionally, orders priced outside of an exchange may not fetch an efficient price because some market participants are not consulted.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems, methods and apparatus for accurately and efficiently pricing orders, and for executing trades based on the determined prices.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds