The Decision Software Trading System (“DSTS”) is a real-time fixed income sales / trading system specifically designed for high performance pricing and transaction processing. Institutional and retail dealers are able to take advantage of DSTS’s real-time trader oriented functionality, wide breath of product coverage, and global capabilities to manage their business more effectively. DSTS supports the full spectrum of enterprise wide trading activities from electronic web trading to trading desk analytics to straight through trade processing. The specialized requirements of customers, salespeople, traders, trading assistants, the middle office, the back office, risk managers, compliance officers, and trading management are supported through customized workstations.

In the United States DSTS is currently being utilized by clients such as AG Edwards, Charles Schwab, Goldman Sachs – Spear, Leeds & Kellogg Division, Harris Bank, Fidelity Capital Markets, and Societe Generale. In Canada seven of the top nine fixed income dealers currently use DSTS to manage their fixed income sales and trading activities across all fixed income products. They include Scotia Capital Markets, Merrill Lynch Canada, TD Securities, CIBC Wood Gundy, Bank of Montreal, Casgrain & Company, Laurentian Bank of Canada, and First Associates Investments.

Clients using DSTS to support their retail fixed income sales and trading activities include AG Edwards, Charles Schwab, Spear Leeds & Kellogg, First Associates, Bank of Montreal, and Merrill Lynch Canada.

Decision Software’s newest product, BondOne, is a browser-based application specifically designed to support retail sales order management activities across a wide range of fixed income products. It was tailored to support a retail sales and trading organization with remote sales offices. BondOne’s initial installation will support over 7000 retail brokers located throughout the United States.

DSTS is a true multi-currency system and as such fully supports the following financial products globally:

DSTS allows each user to easily access all trading and risk management functions from a single, user-configurable screen. DSTS enables each trader to custom design their own screens with the specific display and data placements according to their own individual preferences. In addition each user can specify multiple sort and break parameters for displaying position information.

Traders can enter trades quickly, manage their positions, view real-time P&L, price their inventory, broadcast offerings / prices to their sales force, execute orders, manage their risk, and perform analytics. The financing desk can enter repo trades, fund inventory positions, and manage the firm’s overall collateral. Trading management is able to view individual and consolidated positions, P&L and risk in real-time across the entire firm. Sales personnel can search / view offerings, enter orders, and monitor prices / spreads directly or via the web. Slate trade entry for automatically matching trader side and sales side of a trade is supported.

DSTS’s electronic trading functionality enables users to completely automate their retail and institutional fixed income electronic trading activities. DSTS can be described as an enterprise wide “Order Based Trading System” that allows its users to manage their electronic trading business. It acts as a business rules engine for managing all aspects of their electronic trading activities. This electronic trading functionality includes support for multi-tier pricing, offerings by channel, order management, and user defined rules governing order auto-execution.

DSTS automates the flow of real-time offerings, pricing, and order information between trading desks and any number of used defined distribution channels. These channels can include institutional sales desks, retail brokers, customers, internal / external web-based systems, ECN’s, ATS’s, and proprietary systems. Interfaces to real-time benchmark prices allow traders to drive their matrix pricing, offerings, and tier pricing automatically. DSTS has trade interfaces to TradeWeb, e-Speed, BrokerTec, Garban, BondDesk, ValuBond, CollectiveBid, and Bloomberg.

DSTS’s real-time architecture and messaging capabilities allows all e-trade data to be processed and distributed in real-time globally. DSTS supports a wide range of order types (market, limit, request for quote, hold inventory, etc) that can be routed to the appropriate trading desk for auto-execution or trader review. The rules governing auto-execution of orders are under the control of each trader responsible for that security. Auto-executed filled orders will automatically update the trader’s position, P&L, offerings, and risk in real-time. Trades can be routed to the back office for settlement / clearance.

DSTS is a proven solution for supporting the funding and collateral management requirements for a global financing desk. DSTS’s real-time multi-currency functionality allows the financing desk to monitor and make efficient use of a firm’s available collateral and funds.

DSTS allows seamless, real-time integration of buy/sell trading functions with finance trading functions. The financing desk can enter repo trades, fund inventory positions, and manage the firm’s collateral. Traders can see the impact of negative or positive cost-of-carry on their P&L in real-time. Average published rates or specific financing transactions may be used. Users can monitor funding requirements across all products firm wide, review cash flow projections by user defined gap schedules, and manage available collateral.

DSTS is one system. All products and functionality have been developed internally and incorporated into DSTS by Decision Software. We feel that the benefits of one front office system across all products are substantial. They include:

• One Trade Entry Screen
• One Set of Risk Numbers
• One Set of Counterparty Limits Numbers
• One Set of P&L Numbers
• One Set of Cost of Carry Numbers
• One Transaction Processing Record
• One Security Master Database
• One Customer Account Database
• One System for Managing Offerings
• One System for Order Management

One system means more reliable information across your entire firm. It also means fewer reconcillations between disparate systems, less support staff, fewer errors, and lower costs. Trading management is able to view positions, limits, P&L, and risk across the entire firm. One system across all products gives you better control over your entire sales and trading operation.

DSTS architecture is fully scalable and can be configured to support a single trader, a complete trading floor or a worldwide trading operation. The system supports a six level organizational hierarchy structure that permits rolling up and distribution of trade, position, P&L, and risk information to traders and trading management on a need to know basis. Functional security for limiting functions to user responsibility is also supported. A full audit trail history for each trade is maintained on-line.

DSTS users enjoy the advantages of C++ object-oriented programming methodologies within a fully distributed client / server environment. Our object-oriented bi-directional API allows users to easily receive data from and send data to external systems / spreadsheets in real-time. Windows NT/2000/XP and UNIX platforms are supported. Users may utilize either Sybase or Oracle as their relational database.