Patent ID: 6983259

Claim:
An anonymous trading system for trading fungible instruments between traders, comprising; a communications network for transmitting electronic messages; a plurality of order input devices connected to the communications network each for generating electronic price quotation messages including bid and/or offer prices and for communicating to a trader price information received from the communication network as a function of electronic price quotation messages generated by other order input devices; a plurality of matching engines connected to and comprising part of the network for matching bids and offers input into the system and for executing deals where prices are matched, each matching engine having an associated market distribution means for distributing price quotation messages to an associated subset of the order input devices; wherein each of the plurality of matching engines is connected to each of the other of the plurality of matching engines and, at no time is more than one of said matching engines active performing price matching and deal execution, the remaining matching engines being passive and the respective market distribution means of said remaining passive matching engines distributing price messages from the active matching engine to their associated order input devices.