Appital, the technology provider specialising in peer-to-peer price discovery and liquidity sourcing for asset managers, has introduced ‘Price Discovery in Appital Insights’, aimed at improving natural liquidity generation among its buyside clients. The new functionality allows buyside traders to gain insights on potential pricing and volume before committing to an order.
The newly launched feature is claimed to be an industry-first that enables buyside traders to seek selective feedback on live orders, providing critical information to inform trading decisions. Traders retain full control over when and how they interact with their counterparts and platform liquidity. Additionally, portfolio managers (PMs) can respond to price discovery processes without initiating an order in their Execution Management System (EMS), facilitating opportunistic liquidity discovery and potential alpha generation.
Appital’s updated workflow introduces new, uncommitted order types that can transition to committed orders when traders decide to launch a bookbuild. This development reduces the duration of bookbuilds and increases the likelihood of success while maintaining anonymity for buyside firms and mitigating the risk of information leakage or price erosion.
The new functionality also allows Appital clients to unlock latent liquidity by inviting specific firms to provide feedback on potential orders. If sufficient demand is identified during the price discovery process, the information flows back anonymously to the originator, who can then choose to launch a bookbuild.
Mark Badyra, CEO of Appital, commented: “With Price Discovery in Appital Insights we are digitising yet another step in the high-touch trading mechanism while also minimising risk of information leakage and price erosion. This aligns with our strategy to deliver unique workflows to trading and investment teams. I believe that illiquidity issues can be solved globally by bringing technological innovation into the equity market and providing distinctive functionality to the buyside. With Price Discovery in Appital Insights, firms are able to generate orders that would otherwise not exist, resulting in increased deal flows and liquidity events.”
In a separate announcement, building upon Appital’s existing partnerships with Turquoise MTF and executing brokers Instinet and Bernstein, the company confirmed the addition of Virtu Financial’s POSIT MTF as a European execution venue. This partnership expands Appital’s European equity coverage to over 21,000 equities across 24 European countries. Virtu Financial is also being integrated as an executing broker for client flows negotiated on Appital’s BookBuilder platform, providing the buyside community with enhanced execution options for large orders.
Virtu Financial offers execution, liquidity sourcing, analytics, and workflow technology for institutional clients, including the POSIT MTF, a dark multilateral trading facility in Europe and the UK. This collaboration follows the integration of Virtu Financial’s Triton Valor EMS with Appital’s BookBuilder platform earlier this year.
“We have experienced a period of accelerated growth since Appital Insights went live in September 2023 and we introduced several workflow and functionality enhancements,” commented Badyra. “We have now reached a critical mass, as a significant number of large asset managers are onboarded and our platform liquidity has surged in recent months.”
Appital’s platform supports cross-border liquidity sourcing, ranging from large-cap equities to less liquid small and mid-cap stocks, often encompassing multiple days’ Average Daily Volume (ADV). The company has already facilitated $12 billion of buyside liquidity on its platform, with average orders spanning 2.7 days’ ADV and opportunities ranging from $1 million to $260 million. Currently, 43 asset managers with over $20 trillion in assets under management (AUM) are signed up, with over 60 more firms in the onboarding stage, collectively managing an additional $30 trillion in AUM.
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