Patent ID: 7318045

Claim:
A method for generating and transmitting trades to a clearing computer system using a network, the trades comprising fully matching an offer to buy with an offer to sell or partially matching one of an offer to buy or an offer to sell with the other of the offer to buy or the offer to sell, the method comprising: receiving, at an external trading computer system, an input indicative of a selectable number of trades; partially matching, at a trading computer system, at least one offer to buy a financial instrument and at least one offer to sell the financial instrument to generate the trade, the partial matching comprising fully matching one of the offer to buy or the offer to sell and partially matching the other of the offer to buy or the offer to sell so that a remainder of the trade is unmatched; transmitting, from the trading computer system to the external trading computer system, the fully matched one of the offer to buy or the offer to sell separately from the remainder of the trade; receiving, by the external trading computer system, at least one trade from the trading computer system, the at least one trade received comprising the fully matched one of the offer to buy or the offer to sell; counting, by the external trading computer system, a number of trades received from the trading computer system; determining, by the external trading computer system, whether the number of trades equals the selectable number of trades; sending the at least one trade received, including the fully matched one of the offer to buy or the offer to sell, from the external trading system to the clearing system via the network when it is determined that the selectable number of trades have been received; matching, at the trading computer system, the remainder of the trade; transmitting the matched remainder of the trade from the trading computer system to the external trading computer system; receiving, by the external trading computer system, the matched remainder of the trade; and sending the matched remainder of the trade to the clearing system separately from the fully matched one of the offer to buy or the offer to sell.