Most banks keep their forex risk analysis tools in the forex research and analytics portal, and fixed-income tools in a special fixed-income site. Some banks update the data that informs these tools every 10 minutes. Some update it daily. By luck or by design, CSFB has chosen to keep hundreds of analytics tools in an enormous range of instruments all in one place – and all updated in real time.
Hedge funds that treat forex options as an asset class can view relative value and spread data on these instruments. Corporates can monitor and chart spot forex rates or price options or revalue a portfolio of options. Emerging-market investors can plot emerging-market government bonds against corporates. There really is no limit to the types of data that can be analyzed here. Other banks may have superior individual analytics tools, but none of them can combine them all into one real-time customizable platform.
Clients can build their own pages, so if they want to run real-time futures prices on the same page as selected CDS spreads, they can. They can also create special pages for individual trade ideas or strategies, and share this information with just a selected person or group at CSFB. When they create a chart that illustrates their strategy, they can save it, see it update over time and write notes on it. If one user of the system sends a particular chart to another user through the messaging system, both parties can see the curve continue to update after it has been sent and received.
The next stage for CSFB is to add trading functionality to this platform. That should go live in 2004, and it will make this platform an even more important part of clients’ working life.
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