INSIDER TRADING DETECTION

1 . A method, comprising:

receiving news event data and at least one associated rating of a relationship between the news event and a financial instrument which may be traded on a market;

checking that the at least one associated rating meets criteria;

identifying a plurality of orders for the financial instrument present in a time period defined according to a time stamp of the news event;

identifying, using a processor, an order from the plurality of orders as being potential insider trading by comparing a price position of the order with a characteristic of the market after the news event;

generating an alert for the order identified as being potential insider trading; and

displaying the alert at a display system, the alert comprising at least the associated rating.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

receiving the news event data and the at least one associated rating in a real-time stream,

the alert being generated and displayed in real time for each order identified as being potential insider trading.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the characteristic of the market is the price of the financial instrument in the market.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the characteristic of the market is an index of the market.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying the order from the plurality of orders as being potential insider trading comprises comparing a price position of the order with both a price of the financial instrument after the news event and an index of the market after the news event.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one associated rating is an impact rating indicating a confidence that a news event will influence volatility of the financial instrument.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one associated rating is a relevance rating indicating how strongly related to the news event the financial instrument is.

8 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

checking that the news event data meets a novelty condition by checking a novelty rating of the news event data.

9 . The method of claim 8 , further comprising:

calculating the novelty rating by comparing the news event data with historical news event data.

10 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the time period is defined according to a user input and the method further comprising receiving the user input.

11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying the order includes identifying the order from the plurality of orders as being possible insider trading when the price position of the order differs by at least a variance threshold from a characteristic of the market after the news event.

12 . The method of claim 11 , further comprising updating the variance threshold automatically according to an observed frequency of identification of orders as being potential insider trading and according to a volatility indicator of the financial instrument.

13 . A method comprising:

receiving historical news event data and at least one associated rating of a relationship between the news event and a financial instrument which may be traded on a market;

checking that the at least one associated rating meets criteria;

receiving user input specifying a look back period and a variance threshold;

identifying, a plurality of orders for the financial instrument present in the look back period immediately before the time stamp of the news event; and

identifying, using a processor, an order from the plurality of orders as being potential insider trading if a price position of the order differs by at least the variance threshold from a characteristic of the market after the news event.

14 . The method of claim 13 , further comprising:

generating a graphical display of prices of the financial instrument which also shows the news event data and at least one associated rating.

15 . The method of claim 13 , further comprising:

generating an alert that includes details of the news event, of the order identified as being potential insider trading, and of the at least one associated rating; and

displaying the alert at a graphical user interface.

16 . The method of claim 14 , comprising:

saving the graphical display and details of the news event, of the order identified as being potential insider trading, and of the at least one associated rating for use in a case display of a graphical user interface.

17 . A system comprising:

an input arranged to receive news event data and at least one associated rating of a relationship between the news event and a financial instrument which may be traded on a market;

a processor arranged to check that the at least one associated rating meets criteria;

the processor being arranged to identify a plurality of orders for the financial instrument present in a time period defined according to a time stamp of the news event; and

the processor being arranged to identify an order from the plurality of orders as being potential insider trading by comparing a price position of the order with a characteristic of the market after the news event.

18 . The system as of claim 17 , further comprising:

a parameter setting engine arranged to automatically update a variance threshold using during the comparison process according to an observed frequency of identification of orders as being potential insider trading and according to a volatility indicator of the financial instrument.

19 . The system of claim 17 , further comprising:

a non-transitory memory arranged to store the order identified as being potential insider trading together with the news event data and the at least one associated rating.

20 . A web browser application stored in a non-transitory processor readable memory and at least partially executed on a processor to perform the method as recited in claim 1 .