Lime Trading Corp.
Lime Trading Corp., also widely known as Lime Financial, is a United States-based financial technology company and a registered broker-dealer. Headquartered in New York, the company specializes in providing high-performance, low-latency trading technologies and direct market access (DMA) to the U.S. equity and options markets.
The company's primary focus is not on casual, long-term investors but on sophisticated, active, and professional traders, as well as institutional clients such as hedge funds, proprietary trading firms, and other broker-dealers. Lime's core business is built on providing the technological infrastructure?speed, reliability, and advanced connectivity?required for high-volume and automated trading strategies.
Continue…Founded in 2000 as Lime Brokerage, the firm was created by hedge fund traders who were unable to find a brokerage that could meet their demanding needs for speed, volume, and privacy. The company's technology was later acquired by Score Priority in 2020, which subsequently rebranded the entire operation to Lime Financial (and operates as Lime Trading Corp.) to leverage the brand's long-standing reputation in the professional trading community.
Lime Trading Corp. is a registered broker-dealer with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), and the National Futures Association (NFA).
Core Products and Services
Lime's offerings are bifurcated into two main categories: Screen Trading (platform-based) for discretionary traders and API Trading (Application Programming Interface) for automated, algorithmic traders.
API Trading Solutions
This is the cornerstone of Lime's business, designed for quantitative and systematic traders who require direct, high-speed programmatic access to the markets.
- REST API: A modern, web-based API that is relatively easy to integrate, making it popular with individual algorithmic traders and developers. It supports trading, account data, and market data streaming. Lime provides a Python SDK to further simplify integration for traders using the Python programming language.
- Lime Direct API: A high-performance, low-level API for traders who need the absolute lowest latency. It is available in multiple programming languages, including C++, C#, Python, and Java, allowing for deep integration with custom-built trading applications.
- FIX Protocol: The company offers connectivity via the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol, which is the global industry standard for institutional electronic trading and order routing. This service is aimed at institutions and proprietary trading firms that use sophisticated, FIX-compliant trading systems.
Screen Trading Platforms
For active traders who execute trades manually, Lime provides several front-end platforms:
- Lime Trader (Web and Mobile): The company's proprietary, flagship platform. It is a web-based and mobile (iOS and Android) application designed for fast, reliable execution. It includes real-time streaming data, advanced charting, watchlists, and tools for trading U.S. equities and options.
- Sterling Trader? Pro: A third-party, professional-grade trading platform widely used by active day traders and institutions. Lime offers connectivity through Sterling, providing clients with its advanced order entry, portfolio management, and market data features.
- CQG: Another third-party platform integration, typically known for its strength in futures and global market data, which Lime provides for access to its equity and options execution services.
- Take Profit: A community-driven charting and trading platform that integrates with Lime's brokerage services, offering advanced technical analysis tools and social trading features.
Key Services and Features
Underpinning its products, Lime provides a suite of specialized services:
- Direct Market Access (DMA): Lime provides clients with direct connectivity to all U.S. equity and options exchanges and dark pools. This bypasses intermediaries, reducing latency and giving traders more control over their order execution.
- Smart Order Routing (LSR): The company's proprietary LSR technology automatically scans all available market centers to find the best possible price (liquidity) for an order, aiming to improve execution quality and speed.
- Low-Latency Execution: The entire technology stack is optimized for speed, which is critical for strategies that capitalize on small, rapid price movements.
- Hosting and Colocation: For ultra-low-latency trading, Lime offers colocation services. This allows institutional clients to place their trading servers in the same data centers as the exchange matching engines, reducing network latency to microseconds.
- Paper Trading: A simulated trading environment (demo account) that allows new clients and developers to test their platforms, APIs, and trading strategies with virtual money before risking real capital.
- Broad Account Support: The firm supports a wide range of account types, including Individual, Joint, Corporate, LLC, Partnership, and various retirement accounts (Traditional, Roth, and SEP IRAs).
