Anybody uses ORC platform to manage a book of exotics on equity (cliquets, multissets, etc.) ?It is good for vanilla business, but I think for complex exotics is hard to customise even ifAPIs exist. Any experience that can help me ?RegardsGammaFlat

ORC is lame.

What is ORC platform ? Any website for it ?Thanks.

ORC is an exchange system... and they also make a trading system... written in NextStep... muhahahha

I spent nearly 2 years support Orc... and survived.If you are using Orc, make sure you run it on a Macintosh - yes a Mac. The PC port is totally lame, to the point that the vendor (I think they are now called Orc software http://www.orcsoftware.com) should be sued for it - it runs on a PC via a Nexstep emulator. I think the Orc front-end is written largely in Objective C, whatever the hell that is. On a side note, Orc is mixed up with OM group, who provide the Scandanavian exchanges, plus many derivative exchanges around the world.If you work in a derivs shop where most/all systems run using spreadsheets in one form or another (100% of places I know of), give Orc a miss. I like the idea of what Orc is trying to provide - a unified pricing, position-keeping, risk management and trading platform - but the implementation lets the side down. Does anybody know of a vendor or public system that:- does pricing, risk, position keeping and trading- has a solid and reliable back-end- open and flexible, especially for pricing models, data feeds, database etc...- works well with Excel and COM

I had a look at the ORC system in a consulting capacity two years ago, hence my comments may be discounted as they may not reflect recent changes. ORC has interesting ideas on auto trade execution and program trading. I formed the impression that they took an older futures trading system and jazzed it up a bit. One thing I saw which surprised me was their after-thought attempt to capture option time premium on expiry dates. It amazes me how some older, large-scale software systems count time in integer increments (days), so on an expiry day they return only intrinsic value for options. With high implied volatilities, vanilla ATM options can have considerable time value left when you arrive at work at 7:30 a.m. the morning of a 4 p.m. expiry. Think how much more important last-day time value can be for touchier exotic options. Time should be treated as a continuous concept, at least when you are at work.Anyway, what the ORC designers did was add a slider bar with which the user can add an additional fraction of a day to all option maturities, thus allowing one to capture last day time premium. An interesting workaround to cover an all-too-common basic design inadequacy.

Thanks to all.Anyway, to your knowledge, in case of integration of the pricing library I will be asked to code in C++ or others ?I think I read that the API should be in Java...

Orc provides a "dynamic model" API, which from memory involves a lot of C/C++. I was involved in writing an exchange feed handler for Orc, although it was is not specifically pricing related, it did involve a hell of lot of straight C. There is a sockets/string-messaging based API for bypassing the crappy Orc front-end, but from what I remember it didn't offer much in terms of pricing related functionality, more for just getting data out of the Orc server.From what (little) I understood, the "dynamic model" API is intended for integrating your own pricing models, but it is not trivial. I remember hearing stuff about calculation queues, dependencies and junk like that, so I don't think it is a simple matter of a writing a function and linking to libs/headers.You mentioned that Orc is good for vanilla pricing, with which I agree. But for pricing exotics... a bulky, difficult to customise dark-grey-to-black box like Orc sounds rather unsuited to pricing nebulous, often-never-the-same-twice structures like exotics.Obviously I am not a fan of Orc, but if you like it and can handle it, then I wish you all the best.

Boofta,Check out www.firsttraders.com. They deal mainly with option traders in America.

mholm, Cheers. Looks better than Orc.

QuoteOriginally posted by: BooftaObviously I am not a fan of Orc, but if you like it and can handle it, then I wish you all the best.Thanks for you wish Boofta, I do need them.Our traders like ORC and they want to have one book in case we start doing some equity exotics,and that's the case. So I have to give it a try !I did some investigations and actually in ORC you can add new models using a Project Builder environment, where you are suppose to code in C or better Objective C (if you wish having OOimplementation). Obj-C is a Mac object-oriented C and from my initial understanding allows touse all OO devices (polymorphism, inerithance, kind of overloading..) in a different way from C++but feasible.Anybody of you know this language and, more, do you know of its use in derivatives ?It would be very nice to find a class structure financially oriented somewhere, in order to startfrom something concrete to work on...ThanksGF

QuoteOriginally posted by: BooftaI spent nearly 2 years support Orc... and survived.- does pricing, risk, position keeping and trading- has a solid and reliable back-end- open and flexible, especially for pricing models, data feeds, database etc...- works well with Excel and COMBoofta:Take a look at SoftCapital´s Zonar, this adresses the same issues as Orc but is native Windows.Cheers,Peter

As a user, I think Orc is pretty lame.

QuoteDoes anybody know of a vendor or public system that:- does pricing, risk, position keeping and trading- has a solid and reliable back-end- open and flexible, especially for pricing models, data feeds, database etc...- works well with Excel and COMImagine Software