With the sheer amount of market data, news and analysis flooding the financial markets these days, this deal couldn't have come sooner. Last month, Swedish software provider Panopticon clinched a deal with Reuters that will integrate Panopticon's treemap technology into its products. In essence, it is a pioneering way of visualizing large data sets so that the professional trading community can digest information as quickly as possible.
"There has been an enormous increase in the amount of data that the sales and the buy side need to screen and analyze and it is becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of it all fast enough," says Willem De Geer, CEO of Panopticon. "Adding treemaps to their products give Reuters a unique position in the market."
This type of tool has already proved successful in fixed income and equities, but the one area that has lacked visual overlay is foreign exchange. "This is the first time that I see the possibility of seeing an application like this in the FX markets," says De Geer. "When we've tried to sell this software to banks, they've often lacked the proprietary data to benefit from something like this."
Reuters' initial target group is about 100,000 of the most active users. Users of Reuters' flagship foreign exchange Dealing 3000 desktop will be able to use this visual technology to spot abnormalities in the markets and therefore make a faster decision on a trade. "This is a significant breakthrough for FX participants and will be an extremely powerful tool for FX data users," says De Geer.
