Our Services

Culvert Capital operates Watershed Technologies' proprietary trading solutions to modernize and streamline financial market interactions. At our core, we believe much of today's infrastructure enriches intermediaries at the cost of efficiency and transparency.

Our mission is to reverse that paradigm by uniting buyers and sellers through two key principles:

Maximize open competition
Reduce systemic friction — eliminating unnecessary delays and costs

Primary Trading Tool: Our ATS

Culvert's flagship offering is a broker-neutral Alternative Trading System (ATS) for listed equity options. Traditional order routing often delays execution, limits price discovery, and introduces unnecessary costs. Our ATS addresses those inefficiencies by:

Enabling real-time, 15-millisecond auctions for order matching
Creating additional opportunities for price improvement via exchange crosses
Minimizing market impact — only order size and side are shared
Supporting seamless integration with any front-end or existing OMS

Our technology routes unmatched orders through flexible, client-selected algorithmic paths ensure the best result across both off-exchange and traditional venues.

Zero Conflict Design

Culvert's platform is built for true best execution, free from the internal conflicts that plague traditional brokers:

Agency-only model — no competing proprietary desks
No Payment for Order Flow (PFOF)
Independent infrastructure — no conflicts of interest
Intelligent liquidity capture — we optimize for your outcomes, not ours

Jump Ball Auction Mechanism

We facilitate open, competitive bidding for your orders, ensuring the best available pricing:

15ms competitive window — liquidity providers compete to price your order
ATS matching engine — finds the optimal counterparty
Exchange cross — matched trades sent to a national exchange for further improvement

Your client order is shown only with size and side; price is only revealed if a match is found.

Full Algorithmic Execution Menu

Access to exchange liquidity requires a sophisticated suite of tools. Culvert clients receive a comprehensive brokerage offering, including:

A full menu of exchange-oriented algorithims
Support for multiple executing brokers
Flexibility to select your preferred algo suite post-ATS

Whether you're routing internally or externally, we help you unlock more efficient outcomes.

Complete Integration and Workflow Support

Our platform is engineered to fit within you existing ecosystem:

Client OMS Integration — available from your dropdown menu
FIX HUB — fast, secure connectivity
Executing Brokers — full flexibility with strict oversight for genuine best execution