START is the industry's premier platform for auction rate trading. Napa Group has worked closely with the leading trading desks on Wall Street, seeking their input to create the preeminent software in this market. Below are some of the features that are specific to auction rate securities.
General
- Supports the unique features of auction rate debt and auction rate preferreds, including trading in dollars vs. shares and calculating interest vs. dividends.
Pre-Auction
- The automatic auction reconciliation process confirms the daily auction schedule and checks bidding rights between your firm and the auction agent (or dealer you bid through). This typically happens the day before each auction and allows you to easily recognize security setup conflicts and unreported ACATs.
- Automatic import of Min/Max rates from the auction agent or other dealers.
- START simplifies price talk by allowing traders to group together securities with similar properties and price them in bulk. For example, you can create a group that includes all weekly-auctioning tax-exempt New York securities and give them all similar price talk. And if you don't price your own deals, START can even import price talk from other dealers automatically, eliminating the need to rekey the rates. You can always assign individual price talk to securities as well.
- The system offers multiple ways to enter auction orders:
- If your trading desk is long any of the securities auctioning today, the system saves you the work by automatically creating a sell order for you.
- Traders and sales reps can enter their orders "by security" or "by investor", saving time by allowing multiple orders to be entered at once. Sales reps are restricted to only view only their own customers' information, allowing them to input their orders and freeing up the trading desk for other purposes.
- The system even lets users enter orders for securities that are not auctioning today. This saves a lot of time if a sales rep or customer is going on vacation and wants to submit their bids early.
- Greatly simplified support bid entry makes remarketing your lead-managed deals a breeze.
- If other dealers bid through your desk, START can automatically import their orders, eliminating the need to rekey orders from your large clients.
- START can even accept orders from STARTex, Napa Group's website for buy-side investors. If you enable some or all of your accounts to enter their own bids, they will flow from STARTex down to START automatically.
- Industry-standard business rules include checks that the investor accounts are eligible to purchase each security, prevention of bids outside of the min/max range, and warnings when an account might go short.
- Sales reps and buy-side investors are locked out of the system a configurable number of minutes before each auction deadline, allowing the trading desk to review the bids prior to delivery to the auction agent or another dealer. START checks to make sure all investor positions are accounted for and that all deals where you are the lead manager are fully supported. This virtually eliminates the possibility of a failed auction.
- The system uses the industry-standard file formats and communication methods developed by Napa Group to deliver your orders to the auction agent or dealer. With one-click the system knows where to deliver your orders. No more faxing or klunky email attachments!
Post-Auction
- Using the file formats developed by Napa Group and then used throughout the industry, START electronically receives auction results and settlement instructions from the auction agent or dealer. START notifies the trading desk when it has automatically imported the results, eliminating the need to rekey data and introduce data entry mistakes.
- The system runs the auction order allocation process for all securities that have their rate set. START does the following with one click:
- Rejects, fills, or pro-rates all orders
- Updates investor positions and inventory as of the effective date of the auction
- Calculates interest, commissions, and broker fees
- Feeds the executed trades to your backoffice
- Traders and sales reps can run reports and deliver information out to the investors. Even better, the buy-side investors can be empowered to use STARTex, allowing them to see the auction results, the status of their orders, and their new positions.
Reporting
- Users can run commission and broker fee reports to track the desk's performance.
- All information captured by the system is available to be reported, including trade and auction order history, investor positions, auction rate history, interest payments,
- Ad Hoc Query provides the ability to generate your own customized reports.
