Patent ID: 8195563

Claim:
An electronic trading system adapted to provide a communication platform for a plurality of workstations, each of said workstations permissioned to operate at an authorization level in said trading system, said authorization levels comprising: a broker workstation authorization level, the broker workstation authorization level authorized to view prices of current orders, enter bids or offers on behalf of the broker or on behalf of customer participants, and trade on current bids or offers on behalf of the broker or on behalf of customer participants; an interactive trader workstation authorization level, the interactive trader workstation authorization level authorized to view prices of current orders, enter bids or offers, and trade on current bids or offers; a view only workstation authorization level, the view only workstation authorization level authorized to view prices of current orders; a memory; and at least one processor, the at least one processor for executing instructions for displaying a graphical user interface, said interface for use in trading a financial instrument, the graphical user interface comprising: a countdown timer, financial instrument information and trade action buttons, the countdown timer showing time left for a join the trade opportunity, said join the trade opportunity generated in response to said at least one processor: executing a trade of a financial instrument between a buyer and a seller: locking the electronic trading system with respect to the traded financial instrument to prevent additional participants from joining the trade while the buyer and seller are queried to trade additional volume of the financial instrument; querying the buyer whether the buyer desires to buy or sell additional volume of the financial instrument; and querying the seller whether the seller desires to sell or buy additional volume of the financial instrument; wherein the processor is configured to start the join the trade opportunity by authorizing additional participants to join the trade, and to start the countdown timer; wherein the join the trade opportunity comprises querying at least a portion of the additional participants to determine whether each of the additional participants desires to buy or sell a volume of the financial instrument.