Kalahari

Woking, UK-based Kalahari provides pricing and analytical systems to banks, money broking firms, utility companies and other financial and trading institutions on a global basis.

The company’s main product in the energy markets is kACE Energy (Kalahari advanced calculation environment), which is a fully functional pricing and analytical system based on Kalahari’s flagship product, kACE.

kACE Energy has an electronic whiteboard order system capable of taking either manual or electronically delivered orders from brokers or exchanges, with the functionality to show the best price on any period or load shape.

The whiteboard includes arbitrage functionality to imply best price for any period or load shape within a number of markets, such as UK electricity. Incorporated within the system there is a fully integrated spread matrix taking prices direct from the whiteboard order system and implying prices across load shapes, periods and markets.

Another feature of the system is that it manages to obtain consistent curves from which prices for generic forwards, options and other derivatives can be found – something that has traditionally been a problem in the industry, with market prices available for multiple overlapping forward periods and various cyclical demand patterns. kACE Energy achieves these consistent curves by combining established methods used in the financial markets with those bespoke to energy.

Curves generated are accurate for both short- and long-dated periods, and are consistent with the live prices obtained from the whiteboard. This allows users to accurately price any standard or non-standard period in a real-time environment.

The forward pricing curve for any market can be produced and maintained on an individual user’s terminal and then ‘shared’ across a network for all other users, allowing a uniform pricing methodology.

Lastly, kACE Energy offers a fully functional modelling environment that provides comprehensive tools for the pricing of single or multi-leg option strategies across all periods within any of the markets covered. Daily options are also handled efficiently. Incorporated within the option environment is the capability to interpolate/extrapolate volatility smiles, combined with an intuitive price feed from the relevant curve.

kACE Energy will fulfil a client’s need for an open architectural environment that can encompass all the relevant energy product lines – UK, continental and US power, natural gas, oil and weather.

Contact

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Graham Mansfield
e-mail: [e-mail]
Tel: [phone]
www.kalahari.co.uk