Patent ID: 7472087

Claim:
A method for enabling an order of a user to interact with at least one market process, comprising: configuring a trading process in accordance with the order, wherein the order identifies an item for trading and wherein the order is executable by the market process to complete a trade for the item by pairing the order with a contra-side order of another party, automatically performing, at the trading process, market discovery according to a user-selected discovery strategy selected from a plurality of discovery strategies, wherein the discovery strategies are configured to obtain market information for the item in the order according to different discovery methodologies, and wherein the selected discovery strategy includes automatically sending a trial order to the at least one market process, wherein the trial order identifies an item for trading and a non-zero quantity of the item, and receiving a pairing report from the market process indicating a pairing of the trial order with a contra-side order at a pairing price, wherein upon pairing, the quantity of the item in the trial order is automatically adjusted to zero, the pairing report providing information about current market depth for the item at the pairing price for the non-zero quantity identified in the trial order while the pairing results in an execution of the trial order for a zero quantity of the item, and after performing said market discovery, automatically acting upon the order at the trading process according to a user-selected action strategy selected from a plurality of action strategies based on information obtained from performing the market discovery, wherein the at least one market process and the trading process are computer-implemented software processes.