It also monitors the value of their positions and to comply with internal and regulatory requirements. Of course, traders are by far the highest volume users of the system. Traders run overnight risk scenarios to make sure that each deal is properly hedged against market moves. For example, it is important for traders to make sure that as interest rates move, their portfolio will remain balanced. So traders run scenarios to identify risk points in portfolios and prevent costly errors.
Traders regularly run thousands of scenarios a day to keep on top of the market.
A reliable platform is required to support this kind of use on a regular basis. The first release of the simulator ran on a high-end Unix multiprocessor machine. Upgrading was going to be very expensive. But without expanding capacity, traders were beginning to turn away less profitable trades. CSFB reevaluated its solution, looking for a new software and hardware combination that would economically provide the needed scalability and performance.