Altura Markets is the leading listed derivatives broker in the Iberian Peninsula, where it provides execution and clearing in all the main organised markets worldwide as well as execution and clearing in the local market for international clients.
Our trading desk has the largest number of brokers of any desk in the Iberian Peninsula. This allows us to offer an excellent brokerage service under any market conditions and at any time our clients require. Altura Markets provides its clients with market access and the necessary liquidity to complete their strategies 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Our clients enjoy a wide range of electronic solutions to access world markets directly, and can consult a derivatives specialist at any time at the main financial hubs.
Our operators’ resourcefulness and alertness means we have the ability to discover and explore market opportunities before our competitors, helping our clients to fulfil their investment strategies satisfactorily.
Trading desk: Low and high touch execution
Altura Markets’ trading desk has professionals with substantial experience in the market, they work in collaboration with the rest of the teams at Société Générale worldwide. This partnership provides us with a privileged point of view on events and news relevant to the market and allows us to pass on this “market intelligence” to our clients.
The Altura Markets desk operates from 7:45 to 22:30, is multilingual and is divided into teams which specialise in different underlying assets, fixed income, equity, currency and commodities. However, the teams work as a single execution centre whenever the market situation calls for it. This way we achieve the best possible execution for our clients, with a management quality superior to that of our competitors.
The differential element of working together with the other Société Générale offices in Europe, allows us to gain access to the most important liquidity pools, so that slippage is reduced to a minimum.
The absence of trading books at Altura Markets removes any chances of conflicts of interest arising and allows us to place our clients’ interests first. In addition, all operations with our counterparties are confidential.
The state of the art trading platforms we use to execute client transactions mean that we can execute complex orders and scenarios between different products and markets.
The Altura Markets trading desk has a Trade Processing (Middle Office) team exclusively dedicated to processing orders once they have been executed in the market. Proper assignment of operations and follow up ensuring that all of them are cleared according to clients’ instructions is the main goal of the Trade-Proc team. The minimisation of operational issues allows our clients to avoid errors and save resources.
Algorithm Production
Altura Markets, together with Soc. Gen. is the first broker to offer algorithms which are built exclusively for futures and options execution.
Trading algorithms have been designed by our engineers and analysts for futures markets taking into account the micro-structure of each market and the different trading strategies.
The teams continuously measure the performance of the algorithms they designed and update them to improve trading strategy results.
Clients can receive a report on the strategy used in order to measure the quality of the execution.
• VWAP
• TWAP
• With Volume
• Arrival Price
• Destination Price
• Short Fall
• Eclipse
• PEG
E-trading. Direct market access
Our e-trading solutions form a distinctive business line within our group with a worldwide team of engineers and analysts working exclusively in this area.
Our support units are in Paris, London and Chicago and cover a 24-hour service, every day of the week.
Altura Markets offers direct access to all the most important listed derivatives markets in the world. By cooperating with a variety of providers and a sound FIX architecture, Altura Markets gives its clients direct access via a wide range of systems. These include the main providers, such as Fidessa, Bloomberg EMSX, GL, ORC, Trading Technologies, CQG, RTS, Stellar, TradingScreen, but also several other OMS (Order Management Systems).
Altura Markets includes back-up connections in its e-trading architecture so there is minimum downtime in the event of a system failure.
Our electronic products provide various tailor-made solutions of high added value:
• Algorithmic Trading
• Order Management System solutions
• Low latency platforms
• Execution services via FIX
• Server Co-location
Client Services
Our presence in the world’s main financial centres eases communication with our clients and expedites troubleshooting. We allocate a “representative” to each client who will always be the first point contact within Altura Markets for any matters related to the clearing and settlement of the operations.
The main duties of this “representative” are as follows:
• Incident resolution
• Clearing
• Issues with commission and fees
• Notification and Resolution of deliveries
• Maturity Notification
• Notification of exercises and assignments - Clearance issues
• Currency conversion
Straight Through Processing Solutions (STP solutions)
In our quest to reduce operational risk, improve risk profiles and reduce clearing costs, which have real added value for our clients, we work extensively with Straight Through Processing solutions (STP solutions).
These solutions improve response, efficiency and effectiveness in processing all orders, from execution to clearing, via input, verification and confirmation. We highlight some of the benefits achieved through STP:
• Better operational control.
• Reduced operational risk.
• Generation of economies of scale.
• Reduced manual intervention.
• Daily reconciliation.
Whenever market architecture allows for it, Altura Markets will offer the client Straight Through Processing solutions, integrated into client accounts and clearing applications.
Altura Net
Altura Net is a single secure portal where our clients have access to our post-trading complete range of products.
Our portal technology, along with our personalised service approach, offers our clients a comprehensive solution. Our clients can use several options to monitor their accounts with updated information about their positions in such a way that they have good control over market risk. Our portal offers the following functions:
• Daily operational reports (extracts and files) in multiple formats.
• Access to daily and monthly reporting modules.
• Access to market and product information, including information and connections to derivatives markets, contract specifications, warranties and closing prices.
• Trade-matching for operations and positions opened that day, as well as historical reports.
• Integrated FTP server to programme receipt of files and extracts for completed transactions.
• User-friendly tools.
Treasury
Altura Markets makes margin calls in the majority of currencies, including those of emerging countries. Clients are able to cover their positions with a single currency if they wish to and we also offer the option of currency conversions to avoid exchange rate risk and ease daily operations.
The frequency of currency conversions depends on the clients wishes - daily, weekly, monthly etc - so we can offer flexibility without neglecting anti-money laundering (AML) procedures.
Altura Markets works with leading banks so that all markets where our clients trade worldwide are effectively covered.
Markets
Our clients can access more than 85 organised derivatives and stock exchange markets worldwide. Our group is the most active brokerage firm worldwide in listed derivatives execution and clearing. On average, Altura Markets and Soc. Gen. trade more than 6.7 million contracts and clears more than 6.9 million contracts daily.
Training
Altura Markets regularly organises specialist courses for its clients about futures, options, equity and interest rates. Over the last few years we have organised seminars which have been attended by more than 300 professionals from various financial groups. We have also organised several taylor-made courses in our clients’ offices.
Research
Altura Markets gives access to the reports prepared by our two shareholders’ research departments. These reports are available to our clients on request. There are a wide variety of reports which include fundamental analysis, technical analysis, strategy reports, trading ideas and market commentaries.