Patent ID: 7398244

Claim:
A method of facilitating trading among a plurality of trading processes participating at a market provided by a market process, comprising: automatically, via a computer, providing a price inquiry for an item to the market process, the market process having an order file and also having, for the item, a subset of the plurality of trading processes registered therewith as a crowd that, as a result of registration, is eligible to receive opportunities from the market process to provide a price that improves upon a price that is listed in the order file for the item, wherein an improved price is a price that is higher than the highest buy price in the order file for buying the item or lower than the lowest sell price in the order file for selling the item, wherein the improved price is not listed in the order file of the market process, and wherein trading processes participating at the market that are not registered in the crowd for the item are not eligible to receive said price improvement opportunities from the market process, and automatically, via the computer, requesting that the market process notify its crowd of a price improvement opportunity for the item, wherein a trading process providing an improved price commits to trade for the item at the improved price.