TheBooks® - Cover to Cover Capabilities

TheBooks® provides modules that manage trading, counter-party notification, position management, order generation, reconciliation, trade accounting, performance and risk management as well as data management.

These modules work together as an integrated solution or  in some cases, separately, providing the level of automation required by the advisor. Configurability, extensibility, and scalability are key attributes of TheBooks. 

Because no two advisors are exactly alike, which modules are used and how they operate is up to you.  External systems such as order generators and other trade entry applications can be easily integrated using TheBooks ActiveX API.  Because TheBooks uses Microsoft’s SQL Server™ as its database, any application that can read an ODBC data source can be used to write customized reports. Unlike a traditional accounting system, TheBooks has been designed with the trader in mind.  Rather than being built independent of trading, TheBooks integrates accounting and performance reporting  into the trading process.

Reports are available in a wide range of formats including PDF, Excel®, Word®, HTML, and raw data.  All reports are delivered via a web browser providing easy distribution of reports inside or outside your organization.

TheBooks includes all the automation required for an alternative investment advisor with managed accounts.  

Components included with TheBooks

Provides tools to manage the order entry and trading activity notification process. It handles all of the paper work and communication associated with placing and reporting trades.
Provides tools to reconcile your accounts with your clearing brokers. It can quickly and automatically reconcile trade confirmations, open positions, and balances. It handles all of the paper work and communication associated with reconciling your trading activity.
Performs real-time P&S processing, ensuring that you always know your positions. It can produce roll trades, exit trades, and reversals. Trades for account opens, closes, additions, and redemptions can also be produced. If you trade multiple systems, it will maintain positions by system without double posting.
Provides a multi-currency accounting engine tailored to the accounting and reporting requirements of the CTA with managed accounts. It handles commission and fee accruals and charging. Management fees, incentive fees, and interest accruals are formula-based. Reporting of performance tables and statements is web-based allowing you to easily deliver information to your clients.
The Performance Reporting module of TheBooks provides both real-time, intra-day performance and risk reporting, valued on the tick, and historic reporting and standard performance tables. All reports are delivered via a web-browser interface. Now you can deliver up-to-the-second performance numbers to anyone in your organization, or to your clients over the Internet.

In addition, TheBooks includes an innovative tool called the Performance Explorer™ which provides graphical drill-down into the performance characteristics of an arbitrary group of accounts over any timeframe. You can examine returns by instruments, sectors, accounts, or portfolios and add or remove markets, sectors, and accounts from the mix.

TheBooks includes the eight industry-wide Barclay indices. These industry-wide benchmarks are updated on a monthly basis and along with any user-defined benchmarks (such as the S&P 500) you want to include, can be overlaid onto the charts for comparative analysis. All charts and data can be copied to other applications for presentation and analysis purposes.
Risk Management includes a Value at Risk module that provides both a current snapshot and a sector profile of VAR for an arbitrary portfolio, but also includes a thirty day history of VAR. The data is presented graphically with the option of sending the underlying data to applications such as Excel for further analysis. A stop loss analysis utility provides a second view into your portfolio's exposure by analyzing your current positions and any protective stops you may have in the market. Scenario analysis allows you to explore the effects of specific market moves on an existing or hypothetical portfolio.
Provides a repository of market price data for research and order generation purposes. It integrates data from a wide range of vendors into a single, consistent format. Combined with flexible continuous contract building and an automatic daily data downloader, the Data Manager is the tool for the systematic trader.
Execution Gateways extend the Trading Desk concept in TheBooks and allows the routing trades directly to exchanges for execution.  As trades are filled, they are automatically updated in TheBooks and for those gateways that have an associated trading platform, such as Open E Cry,  trades can be worked from within the platform; TheBooks automatically records your actions.

For those environments where trading is initiated outside of TheBooks, the Execution Gateway provides FIX drop copy support allowing trades done on any FIX-compliant trading platform to be automatically routed to TheBooks as the trades are filled.  
Provides interfaces for obtaining both real-time as well as end-of-day prices from a wide variety of data vendors. Real-time prices can be obtained from eSignal and CQG. End of day prices can be obtained from eSignal, CQG, CSI, Yahoo, any Excel spreadsheet, text files, and your brokerage statements. In addition, TheBooks API provides the capability to load both real-time and end of day prices as well.