Sphere Launches Liquidity Lake

26 September | SINGAPORE/LONDON – Sphere, the fintech uniting voice and digital trading together on one community platform, today announced the world’s first Liquidity Lake at the Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference (APPEC) in Singapore.

Founded by energy market experts with deep experience in trading technology, Sphere is designed to boost the confidence of traders who operate in increasingly complex, volatile, and fragmented trading environments.

Until now, voice and electronic liquidity pools were isolated from each other, denying traders a clear view of the markets. Sphere enables traders and brokers to trade and see liquidity from digital feeds, side by side with prices distilled from instant messaging and voice trading together on one screen for the first time. The Sphere Liquidity Lake unites trading and data from all regions and trading venues and in doing so, helps liquidity formation and efficient price discovery.

Ami Katschinski, co-founder and CEO of Sphere said: “The status quo where electronic trading is separated from voice and chat OTC trading has become an unnecessary barrier to liquidity and price discovery. Sphere maximises the benefits of the digital trading infrastructure whilst complementing traditional workflows in markets where liquidity is fragmented and challenged.”

Already in use at the world’s top trading houses, oil majors, energy companies, proprietary traders, and leading energy brokerages, Sphere captures all available liquidity, enabling traders to trade and track the energy derivatives market on one intuitive platform.

Over 90 percent of refined oil financial derivatives are still traded via voice and IM communications where traders may need to process up to 5,000 shout-downs from around 50 brokers in an average trading day, while simultaneously dealing with more than 20 digitised information sources.

Katschinski added: “Every trader knows their performance can be compromised by the constant wall of noise. Given this intense trading activity is made up of a mix of audio, textual and visual signals, we realised early on that Sphere could add significant value to traders by consolidating this information for them with our patented technology. Now, for the first time in the oil market, Sphere gives traders the option to trade on screen alongside clear and frictionless access to the fullest array of information available in the market today.”

Proven in refined oil derivatives trading, Sphere’s platform will be applicable to other institutional markets where liquidity and data are often splintered and scant. Sphere solves the impact of fragmentation, limited execution choice, and information scarcity on trading and risk management.