Methods and systems for selecting, in a broker-dealer system for automated trading of securities, a path for sending an order for securities to a terminus market, in which the broker-dealer system includes at least one port, the port being coupled through at least one path to at least one terminus market, wherein each path includes at least one direct link between a port and a market system and optionally one or more additional links between the said market system and other market systems, each path having a first terminus at a port and a second terminus at a terminus market, terminus markets being markets to which orders for securities are sent by the broker-dealer system.

An online system for trading securities is disclosed. The system may include an investor computer, a brokerage computer, and a third party computer, all coupled together by a network. The third party computer responds to investment information requests from the investor computer by providing HTML documents having the desired investment information and a link. The link is a URL address of order software on the brokerage computer, and it includes an indicator of a specific security associated with the investment information. Examples of such securities include stocks, a mutual funds, and options. The link is preferably implemented as a button icon labeled "Trade Now". When the third party computer is an investment research service, the existence of the Trade Now icon greatly expedites the investor's ordering process by directly retrieving an order form with appropriate fields pre-populated. The investor may be required to enter a password.

Apparatus and methods are provided for managing, tracking and controlling page prerequisites in a graphical user interface (GUI). According to one embodiment, in response to a request to display a destination page of the GUI and with reference to prerequisite information, one or more prerequisite pages associated with the destination page are identified. Then, a determination is made whether the requirements of an identified prerequisite page have been satisfied by invoking a method of an instance of a decider sub-component that causes stored information regarding the state of the identified prerequisite page to be retrieved from a current environment/context. Finally, the destination page is displayed if all the requirements of the one or more identified prerequisite pages have been satisfied, otherwise a prerequisite page having one or more requirements that remain unsatisfied is displayed.