Patent ID: 7966249

Claim:
In an electronic trading system having a server and a trading engine, a method for facilitating block trading of financial instruments comprising: establishing at the server a plurality of block trading tiers, each block trading tier having a volume range for block orders within the respective block trading tier, and a minimum order size for counter orders for executing block trades of block orders against the counter orders, within the respective block trading tier; receiving, at the server from a trading device which interfaces with the server, a block order for a financial instrument, the block order having a volume size falling within the volume range of one of the block trading tiers; executing, at the trading engine, the block order against a counter order to produce a block trade, in accordance with the respective minimum order size associated with the block trading tier in which the block order falls; at the server, identifying sets of executed block trades, the executed block trades in a set having matching parties and financial instruments; at the server, combining the executed block trades in each set of matching executed block trades into a single trading order; at the server, removing the individual executed matching block trades from the system; and at the server, executing the single trading order.