DIFFERENT WAYS TO CREATE A TRANSACTION
There are different ways to enter a Trade in Spark:
‘NEW’ BUTTON ON THE RIBBON
1. Press ‘New‘ button (Main Menu, OMS tab).
2. A ticket with all kinds of available transactions appears.
3. Mark the transaction you want to make at the top.
*If, on the other hand, you click on BY, SL, CS, or SS buttons instead of ‘New’, a ticket with the transaction you chose already selected will appear.
TICKET MENU
1. Right-click anywhere in your report grid.
2. Select Transactions.
3. New Order.
This will open a ticket, but instead of having BY, SL, CS or SS as transaction types you will see a transfer IN of LONG or SHORT position.
To create a Long IN / Out: right click > Transactions > Insert/remove Long position.
HOT KEYS
There are some key combinations to open a specific transaction type.
1. Cntrl+N. New Transaction (All transaction types can be chosen).
2. Cntrl+B. Buy transaction.
3. Cntrl+S. Sell transaction.
4. Cntrl+Z. Sell Short.
5. Cntrl+C. Cover Short.
HOW TO FILL IN AN ORDER TICKET
SECTION 1
Target – Total shares to get. You can change between a quantity, a percentage of your AUM, or bps by clicking on the small square on the right side of the typing field.
Working – Active quantity to trade.
Filled – Part of the completed shares (when trade is manual Target=Working=Filled).
Leaves – Filled in Automatically.
Instruction – Market, Limit, Stop, Stop Limit, Market on Open, Limit on Open, Market on Close, Limit on Close.
Broker – Set the broker. It must be a manual broker. When you click on this field, an arrow with a drop down menu will appear. You can select your broker form this menu or you can type it.
The checkbox next to a ‘M‘ means if this broker is a FIX or MANUAL broker.
Commissions – will accept:
- ABS: absolute value.
- CPS: commission per share.
- BPS: bases points.
- SCL: scale
Avg. Price – Select the Average Price of the trade (only for Manual trade).
Net Price – Filled in Automatically.
Settle Currency – the currency in which the order has been executed.
F/X Rate – indicates the foreign exchange rate between Price Cncy and Settle Cncy (Quoted).
Ref. F/X Rate – indicates the foreign exchange rate between Price Cncy and Account Cncy (Quoted).
Add a Trade Date – the date in which the order is done- and Settle Date -the date on which it is reflected-.
Impact cash – active, no active.
SECTION 2
Transaction Type – Select the transaction you want to make. You can choose:
- BY. Open a long position
- SL. Close a long position
- SS. Open a short position
- CS. Close a short position
Identifier – Type the security identifier, if you begin typing it, a search box will open. The security has to exist in Spark for this to populate.
Description – Automatic. The description can be changed in the Security section of Maintenance.
SECTION 3
Strats – This will pull down a list of strategies (called Tags too). The strategies can be defined in Maintenance.
Misc. To Export – when you open this menu, you will see a box that says “To Export”.
If the box is checked, the transaction will go out at the End of Day files. If the flag is not checked, the transaction will not go out.
Notes – Custom Notes.
UDA – You can enter here to modify some UDA (specific client fields).
NOTE: If you don’t want a trade to go out to the broker, open the MISC menu and uncheck the “to Export” Flag.
SECTION 4
Up in the allocation section you have Fund Groups. If you click on it, you will find a list of your fund groups. Check the box of those you want to operate with.
Then, you can manually type a specific target for each of the accounts within those groups in the Target column, as in the picture above.
You can also click on Filter icon to filter your listed accounts. Make sure that the sum of your different targets is the same as the target you added on Section 1.
On the right side, there is a method of allocation. For this example we selected Group Ratio.
This will pre allocate the filled quantity to a ratio that can be edited using the Edit button on the right. Columns:
Compliance – This column will show you if you broke a compliance rule.
Target – This shows your target amount.
Filled – This column shows the actual amount that was filled.
Curr Pos – This column shows your current positions.
Proj positions – This column shows you your projected positions based on the target.
Net Money – Net money.
Add Alloc – Additional allowed allocation quantity until compliance checks fail.
Min Alloc – minimum allowed allocation without compliance checks fail.
Max Alloc – maximum allowed allocation without compliance checks fail.
SECTION 5
In this section you can check your compliance, clear, cancel or create the transaction.
If you click on compliance, the following window will appear (following on the example in Section 4):
In this window, you can see -if any- your accounts that violated a compliance rule.
If the compliance allows the user to override it, you can do so by clicking the override checkbox and then entering a reason (a drop down will appear when you click on the blank box).
The reasons can be created in the Maintenance section. When a compliance rule is triggered, you will get a popup message on your screen, as well as an Email (if the compliance rule is set up as an Email alert).
Spark will not allow you to place the transaction without fixing the compliance rule (depending on how the compliance rule is created).
MAKE A HISTORICAL TRANSACTION
If you need to add a transaction from the past on Spark:
1. Create the manual transaction following the previous steps and fill in the data.
2. Change Trade and Settle dates as in the image below:
