Methods for risk portfolio management within an electronic trading system

Abstract

A switch engine module enables advantageous management of a risk portfolio. The switch engine receives interest rate risk portfolios from a plurality of traders, and for each prospective trader, provides available switches based on positions in other counterparty portfolios that offset the viewing traders' positions. The offsetting positions are encoded with credit preference information in order to identify eligible trades based on both counterparties credit preferences. The credit preferences of the participating traders can be taken in consideration in making switches.

That which is claimed is:  
     
         1 . A method for financial instrument management utilizing an computer system, wherein said electronic trading system includes a plurality of traders operationally connected, said method comprising the steps of: 
 receiving a financial instrument portfolio from at least a first trader and a second trader from the plurality of traders;    calculating relative risk positions of each financial instrument portfolio received from the first and second traders;    matching offsetting relative risk positions of the first and second traders, thereby executing a switch; and    updating the financial instrument portfolios of the first and second traders based on the executed switch.    
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising means for generating a confirmation notice for confirming a switch of offsetting risk positions.  
     
     
         3 . A computer program product for risk portfolio management utilizing an electronic trading system, wherein said electronic trading system includes a plurality of traders operationally connected, said computer program product comprising: 
 a computer usable medium having computer-readable code means embodied in said medium, said computer-readable code means comprising: 
 computer readable code means for receiving a financial instrument portfolio from at least a first trader and a second trader from the plurality of traders;  
 computer readable code means for calculating relative risk positions of each financial instrument portfolio received from the first and second traders;  
 computer readable code means for matching offsetting relative risk positions of the first and second traders, thereby executing a switch; and  
 computer readable code means for updating the financial instrument portfolios of the first and second traders based on the executed switch.