High-frequency brokerage to incorporate strategy development system.

A front- to back-office trading system for high-frequency trading is being assembled by Wedbush, a full-service investment firm.

Fresh after Wedbush’s acquisition in June of Lime Brokerage, a provider of ultra low-latency, high throughput trading systems and agency brokerage, Lime has acquired Cactus Trading Systems, which provides technology for implementation, testing and deployment of algorithmic trading strategies.

By integrating Cactus technology, Lime will enable traders and quants to express trading strategies in code, use the same code to back-test their strategies against historical data, simulate trading against live data, and then move to production trading.

“Cactus clients need market data, execution, and clearing solutions, and Lime clients need back-testing, simulation, and enhanced performance reporting,” Jeff Bell, CEO of Lime Brokerage, told Markets Media.

Lime’s trading technologies have been integrated with Wedbush Securities’ Advanced Clearing Services to provide high-speed solutions for execution, market data, and risk controls.

With the addition of Cactus, Lime can provide end-to-end trade processing, from strategy design through execution to clearing.

“Our tight integration of Cactus, Lime, and Wedbush represents a unique solution for the market,” Bell said. “Clients will realize the benefits of end-to-end integration from strategy development to execution to clearing and custody.”

The flagship product of Cactus Trading Systems, called Cactus Trader, includes a C++ strategy development API which is agnostic to data feed and execution providers, allowing firms to focus on the logic of their strategies. “The Cactus platform was developed by former traders, so it’s very intuitive and friendly for today’s automated traders,”  said Bell.

“The platform provides a strategy development environment where clients can back-test and simulate their trading strategies,” said Bell. “Once satisfied, the trader can efficiently launch the strategy to production trading.”

Cactus Trader also includes a performance monitoring and risk management user interface that firms can use to centralize research and trading.