Our History
During the 1980’s and early 90’s, Repo was still a new product. The volatility of the Volker days was in full swing and the very idea of trading a matched book was novel. It’s not surprising that the “technology” behind Repo was fairly basic in those days. After executing a transaction, traders would typically grab a pen and write out multiple copies of a paper ticket. One of these tickets was then dropped in a tray on the desk, and, on a regular rotation, somebody would run over to pick up the latest stack and rush it to Operations. Positions needed to be calculated by hand. If something went wrong, traders needed to rifle through a mountain of paperwork. It was an arduous task and one prone to error.
This was the state of the art when Brian Finkelstein (today the President of Helix) was managing global money markets at Kidder Peabody. So, when a few enterprising developers suggested that they could automate this process, Brian was more than ready to listen: rather than writing out tickets by hand, traders could enter them into a computer, allowing the information to be transferred to Ops instantly. Finkelstein liked the idea, but suggested that if the system already contained all the trade data, it might as well calculate positions automatically.
With this conversation, the first features of HelixREPO were born. It started as a simple, in-house application built for computers with glowing green monitors. The technology has changed dramatically in the two decades since, and Helix’s offerings have expanded beyond Repo to the entire Fixed Income industry.
Some things haven’t changed. Former traders still make up a large part of our development team. Requests from clients still drive nearly all upgrades and enhancements. In fact, the relationship between business users and software developers is stronger than ever. Today, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Helix Financial Systems (formerly known as IDT Horizon) has unparalleled access to some of the industry’s most experienced Fixed Income professionals, making our products the best adapted and most flexible tools in the marketplace.