There's an interesting article in today's WSJ titled Traders Are All Over, But for the Shouting, Some Use Software which discusses a new wave of software that simulates the sounds of the pits.

Featured is Goldenberg Hehmeyer & Co's MarketSound product which takes the prices being traded in the market and translates that into voice which calls out the prices and size. Also mentioned in the article was "a large electronic U.S. market also rolled out its own simulator, dubbed Market Velocity" but I could not find a link to this software.

The big advantage to sound is that you have another dimension that your audio senses can tune into and this allows you to receive more market information than available only to the eyes. This was recently discussed in the article Unlocking the Subconscious.

At the end of the article it states:

quote:

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MarketSound isn't a perfect substitute for real market noise, says Larry Gazette, a hedge-fund manager in New Jersey who helped create the product before he and his business partners sold it to Goldenberg. He still uses it on speakers at home and over headphones at the office, so he can take his eyes off the screens every now and then to read a research report. His biggest complaint is that it lets him listen to only one market at a time. And some traders tell Mr. Gazette the software isn't fast enough to keep up with the increasing speed of trading today.

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This problem is addressed by DeltaT1's Pit Simulator (also known as PitSim for short). Unlike the MarketSound software, PitSim does not read out prices and volume. What it does, is to make a sound (of your choice) every time X contracts trade. You, the trader, decide the value of X so you can adjust it to the market that you're trading. If you choose a tick sound (the default) then you will hear a series of ticking sounds rapidly passing when the market activity picks up. This is a lot like the heart "bleep" monitor you see in the operating room. When the patient's heart beat picks up so does the frequency of the blips.

If you load the PitSim indicator onto more than 1 chart and select a different sound for each one this allows you to audibly monitor multiple markets. When activity picks up in one you can switch to that chart and see what's going on.

Not a New Idea (an aside)

Back in about 1992 I was working as a software consultant for a money broker which was then called Exco (subsequently merged into ICAP). I came up with the idea of translating the market moves into sound and (in my own time) came up with a prototype that read out market moves to the brokers. I recorded the sounds myself and when certain events happened in the market it would put together a sentence and spit it out. Unfortunately the prototype wasn't taken up by management and so died out there - perhaps too far ahead of itself in time. Incidentally a lot of my other prototypes were taken up and lived long and successful lives and hopefully made Exco a packet of money.

Was it good software? Well Exco made a pile of money selling the software to at least one other money broker so I'm guessing yes.