Open source software company Marketcetera has secured $4 million in Series A funding. The startup is developing a software stack, due for general release later this year, for automated financial trading.

Marketcetera is among the first commercial open source companies to aim for the specialized world of Wall Street trading. Its Marketcetera Platform consists of an order-entry application, an order-management system, a reporting app that tracks trade activity, and a utility for bulk loading trade orders.

For ease of deployment, Marketcetera's server software has been packaged as a VMware appliance, which comes preconfigured with Ubuntu Linux, MySQL, Ruby on Rails, and a few other components.

Marketcetera is designed for automated trading, in which algorithms make rapid fire trades. CEO Graham Miller says automated trading accounts for about 30% of trades on U.S. exchanges and that percentage is growing. Marketcetera's competition includes FlexTrade and Portware.

A prerelease version of the Marketcetera Platform, version 0.4.2, is in the hands of a few early adopters. The software is available under the GPL; a commercial license eventually will be offered to companies that want to go that route.

Marketcetera was founded last year by Miller, who brings experience developing and overseeing trading systems for Wall Street firms, and Toli Kuznets, Marketcetera's CTO, whose background includes hands-on work with automated trading systems.

Investors include Shasta Ventures; Jack Selby, managing director of San Francisco hedge fund Clarium Capital; and angel investors.