FTS Interactive Markets:
Financial Trading Simulations with Price Discovery

Some things can only be experienced. One of these is a live trading floor, where orders are submitted, prices are negotiated, activity is fast paced and competitive, and everyone reacts in real time to the actions of others. The FTS Interactive Markets with price discovery create this experience in an educational setting.
How it works
  • What is traded is specified in a trading case
  • The instructor selects the case and starts the market (the markets are easy to run)
  • Student’s trade with each other in a competitive market: they submit bids and asks, buy and sell orders. Trade execution is instant, and after each trading period (of a few minutes), everyone gets immediate feedback on their performance.
  • The trading cases have clear learning objectives
  • The simulation is repeated a few times to give the markets time to converge and for the learning to become apparent
What they learn
  • They experience what it is like to be a trader, how a market really works.
  • They get an intuitive understanding of the price discovery process, market efficiency, market impact, liquidity, and many other practical aspects of a financial exchange.
  • They get a strong understanding of financial instruments; the cases cover a broad range of instruments, including stocks, bonds, options, forwards, futures, swaps, currencies
  • It has proven to be one of the best ways to teach time value of money, market efficiency, option pricing, and forwards and futures.
The Cloud Based System
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Runs on any device

  • Instructors can start and run a market from any device, including smart phones
  • Students can connect from any smart device as well
  • Eliminates the need for a computer-equipped classroom or a trading room
  • Ideal for online and hybrid courses
  • Try it out: click here and in the new window, click "Connect to Demo"
The Windows System
Contact us for installation instructions
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Advanced Capabilities

Learn More

Overview

How To

Features

About FTS

The Financial Trading System was created by OS Financial Trading System.  Founded in 1992, FTS, as we are commonly known, is a leading provider of trading simulation software and other educational software.  
It was founded by Professors John O’Brien and Sanjay Srivastava.
John O’Brien (PhD University of Minnesota 1985) was Associate Professor of Accounting and Experimental Economics at Carnegie Mellon University and Associate Dean at Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar
Sanjay Srivastava (PhD MIT 1982) was a Professor of Economics and Finance at Carnegie Mellon University and an Associate Dean at the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.
Both remain very active in case development and helping instructors integrate FTS into their classes.
FTS powered the first educational trading room, the “FAST Lab” at Carnegie Mellon University in the early 1990’s,the first educational trading room at a business school. The Smithsonian Institution's Archive of American History made the progressive work of the FAST Lab part of its permanent research collection on innovative information technology and awarded it a Computerworld-Smithsonian medal.

Experimental Research

Experimental Research
FTS has its origins in research. It was originally designed by Professors John O’Brien and Sanjay Srivastava, and the first research paper using FTS came out in the  Journal of Finance in 1991 Since then, it has been used in a variety of studies, particularly for financial market experiments, and a list of some papers written on or using FTS is below. If you know of a paper that is not on the list, we would greatly appreciate it if you would send us the link.
Some Papers Written Using FTS