More rude behavior is on the way.

To the annoying practice of people talking on cell phones while they are out to lunch with friends, or texting during meetings, you can now add FinanceFone from Cantor Fitzgerald. With FinanceFone, active traders will find another reason to ignore what is going on around them – they will be checking market quotes and news.

FinanceFone users can get subsecond deliver of news and data on their mobile devices.

FinanceFone builds on a spread-betting product that Cantor Index launched in the UK running on an XDA II – a device that looks like a slim iPAQ. In the US, Cantor Fitzgerald is introducing a real-time market data service with prices from the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ, plus prices from global markets and for commodities and currencies, all for $19.95 a month.

Cantor will provide a fixed client, based on technology from weComm, that resides on the mobile device to interface with market data. The weComm platform, designed for wireless data delivery, supports data streams with end-to-end Microsoft technology including Microsoft Windows Server, SQL Server, and application servers. It provides sub-second delivery of prices and information.

“This is an early attempt to woo the retail market,” said Guy Riches at Cantor Fitzgerald in London. “We feel there is demand.”

Use of mobile trading platforms was beginning to take off about the time the market crashed. While Cantor doesn’t have any brokerage partners for FinanceFone, it expects that once the product is out in the market, established retail equity brokers might wish to leverage Cantor’s experience. Soon investment firms could offer FinanceFone with trading functionality in a package that includes discounts for frequent traders.

“We want to get it out there as a data product first and then we would be happy to talk to other firms about white labeling the product so they could distribute it to their active traders,” said Riches. “Otherwise we are more than happy to rollout our own proprietary retail equity trading capabilities and focus on satisfying demand for real-time data and trading capabilities on mobile.”

Because the mobile devices can be upgraded with enhancements sent over the air, adding new products or permitting trading would be simple. The weComm technology fully supports trading, guaranteeing the security and integrity of transactions, even in areas of poor connectivity.

Several major discount brokers have supported wireless trading, but with only modest success.

Charles Schwab has offered a browser-based data and trading device, said Adam Kornak, Microsoft’s mobility specialist for financial services. “The challenge Schwab has seen is that mobile data networks are not really taking off on browsers. Connectivity is a challenge; traders are not going to use a mobile browser as often as they will use a desktop application for trading.” TD Waterhouse and Fidelity also offered applications that were browser-based.

“weComm's streaming technology benefits users by insuring that content updates on the mobile device when it changes at the source,” explained Oliver Sturrock, COO of weComm. “Also, by sending out only updated data items, we cut down on the bandwidth and therefore the cost.”

“You see market prices flashing each time they change, with no need to refresh,” said Riches. “You can watch the Dow, Dollar-Sterling, Microsoft or a selection from hundreds of other instruments and see price updates in real-time. Clients can monitor multiple financial instruments on one screen, or set up a portfolio page where they can see how much they own of a stock, their purchase price, the current price, and a running P&L.”

Because the screen is small on a mobile unit, users can display watch lists of 10 instruments at once. Real-time news is available from Dow Jones. Users can click on a headline to read a full story and enjoy advanced news search functions.

Cantor’s FinanceFone picks up the best connection around, added Kornak. If a user hits a dead spot, the application stops, but starts up immediately when a connection is restored. Users don’t have to take five minutes to resynchronize.

“When you're working with a connection whose quality can vary, the underlying technology needs to know when that's happening and respond or alert the user. weComm's Mobile Transport Protocol (MTP) does this in real-time,” said weComm’s Sturrock.

If market response in the US is anything like London’s, look for FinanceFone users at a Starbucks near you.

Three years ago in London, as the firm’s Internet spread betting traffic was growing beyond the phone-based business, it decided to offer a mobile device for trading global indices and commodities in real-time.

“We reasoned that if we gave clients the ability to monitor the market on a mobile device wherever they happened to be then it would help them trade more profitably. We act as the broker, so we want them to be profitable and come back and trade more,” Riches said.

After the first several months, more than 20 percent of Cantor Index electronic trading was coming via the mobile application.

“This vindicates our philosophy that clients do demand real-time data if they are going to be motivated to trade; hopefully they feel that they now never need be away from that data and need never miss a trade opportunity,” Riches said.

Soon London traders will be able to use a single device for trading and communicating. Cantor plans to provide its data and trading in London over devices like Microsoft SmartPhones on an expanding number of networks.

“A lot of our users, while they enjoy the service, don’t want to carry the XDA II around all day,” Riches said.

About half the UK users monitor data on their mobile device but turn to their PCs or the phone when they want to make a trade.

“We were surprised that so many used it as a data product but didn’t wish to trade, even though the trade is safe and secure. The fact that there is demand purely for a real-time data service has led us to launch, initially, a data-only product in the US, real-time trading will follow,” Riches added.

www.cantormobile.com

www.wecomm.com