A trading platform for institutions is the professional software that traders at banks, trading firms and funds use to trade futures and other contracts on many exchanges. The same name also covers low-code platforms, on which banks build their own trading applications. Low-code means building software mostly by setting up ready-made parts, with little hand-written code.
A professional futures screen looks very different from a retail stock trading app. Its main view is the price ladder. This is a vertical list of prices, with the quantity waiting to buy and to sell at each price. The trader places or cancels an order with a single click on a price. One screen connects to many exchanges at once. The platform also enforces each trader's risk limits, and shows charts and positions. It can trade spreads too. A spread is a pair of linked orders, such as buying one month's contract and selling the next month's contract at the same moment.
Imagine a trader in the Gurugram office of a global trading firm. She trades crude oil futures for the firm's company abroad. A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell something at a fixed price on a future date. On one screen, she watches the price ladder for an American exchange's contract, with prices from a financial data terminal alongside. She clicks to buy 5 contracts at $70.10. Before the order leaves, the platform checks it against her limit of 50 contracts. Then it sends the order to the exchange's matching engine. When she needs to buy a large quantity, she starts an execution algorithm from the same screen.
Speed matters here, but less than for the computers in high-frequency trading. A person clicks in tenths of a second. The platform's job is to show the right information clearly and send the order without delay.
The low-code platforms solve a different problem. A bank's sales desk may need a new screen to price bonds for its clients. Building that screen from scratch can take many months. On a low-code platform, the bank's engineers assemble it from ready-made parts in a few weeks.
These platforms are used for futures and options above all, and also by hedge funds. They are different from a broker's order management system, which handles the orders of thousands of retail clients rather than one professional trader's screen.