Patent ID: 8482563

Claim:
An equities trading method, the method comprising: presenting trading information including an order book on a display, said step of presenting trading information including: displaying both orders and trades as distinguished graphical marks in a first portion of said display, said orders and trades being displayed as a function of both time and price, a horizontal axis of said first portion of the display corresponding to time, a vertical axis of said first portion of the display corresponding to price; providing visual attributes to said graphical marks, at least one of said graphical marks being provided with a visual attribute from the group of attributes consisting of: i) line thickness, ii) color and iii) shape, the visual attribute applied to an individual graphical mark being based on at least one of: i) order intention, ii) order age, iii) order size or iv) trade volume, corresponding to the at least one of said graphical marks being provided with the visual attribute; providing a trader an opportunity to click in an auto-route band to enter an order that will be automatically routed to a market center of a computer's choice; and operating the computer to choose a destination for the order placed by clicking in the auto-route band that has the best price.