Popular Electronic Trading Platforms

[Umbrella]

Hi,
I'm wanting to do cross market arbitrage. Ideally, I would like to find a platform so I can do the following.
-Short relatively expensive stocks on one market, then use that money to buy relatively less expensive stocks on another market.
-I want to have access to most international markets; the more the merrier.
-I want to see the best bid and offer prices, so I can instantly act as the counter party. Having to wait will screw up my numbers.
-data that's importable into excel and easily programmed with VBA

I am pretty sure I can do what I want with Bloomberg, but their system may be overkill for my purposes.

Thanks for your help

 

[Eugene Krel]

interactive brokers maybe

 

[Wowbagger]

Yep, IB works pretty well. I hope you have only simplified your model for the forum, because what you plan to do comes with considerable basis and currency risks - and you'd want to know them all before you execute

 

[Yike Lu]

How fast is "instant"?

 

[vincegata]

interactive brokers maybe

Does IB allows to route the orders to specific exchanges?

 

[Umbrella]

I'm going to download IB's demo, to see what I think of it. Looks good so far.
Yeah, I didn't go into too much detail about what I'm planning to do. I'm not planning to use futures, and the currency risk isn't really a concern. I'll be keeping a position in various currencies as part of my diversified portfolio. I just far too often see stock from the same company traded in two separate currencies which occasionally have pricing divergence, as much as 30%, then to go back to par within 3-4 days.
When I said I want the transactions to be instant. I want to see what people are offering and asking and be able to lay claim to that transaction; I want to know where I stand. I wasn't talking about the settlement period.

 

[Umbrella]

Actually, it would be really nice to know if they're able to lend me the shares I want to short, before I expose myself.