Quote from dom993:
The same question goes for anything really ... whether football or backet-ball or hockey players, objects like boats / cars / bikes / pens / computers / phones, books & software, food, art pieces, and of course companies.
It really takes an open market to "objectively" put a price tag on something, with competition & customers in large enough quantity for prices to find an "objective" equilibrium.
It doesn't seem to me that ATS have an open market. Sure, there are numerous ATS providers, but are there many customers? Which ATS & providers are the market leaders?
When it come to a particular individual & a particular object, the "value" of the object has 3 components:
- usage value: the value the object can (help) generate when using it
- exchange value: the value a similar object can be bought / sold on the open market
- sentimental value: the value the owner attributes to the particular object for personal reasons.
In the absence of an open market to determine the exchange value, an ATS value should be based on its usage value, a formula taking into consideration (per unit of trading, ie. per contract / 100 share / ... ):
1. ATS estimated expectancy
2. ATS estimated max.DD over its intended lifespan (capital at risk)
3. ATS estimated P&L over its intended lifespan
4. ATS estimated probability (distribution) of "success" over its intended lifespan
1. / 2. / 3. can be projected from past results (backtesting or live, best being live results matched by backtesting results for the same time period), as long as those past results are trusted. Conservative & nominal estimates should be made.
4. is where the most risk lies for the user. A careful analysis of the ATS internals might help mitigate that risk, but no matter what, any trading system's edge (fully automated to fully discretionary) can be voided overnight - or longer periods time - by regulatory, exchange, political, economical or technology changes.