The present invention discloses method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for a computer-implemented financial management system that permits the trading of securities via a network. A server computer receives buy and sell orders for derivative financial instruments from a plurality of client computers. The server computer matches the buy orders to the sell orders and then generates a market price through the use of a virtual specialist program executed by the server computer. The virtual specialist program responds to an imbalance in the matching of the buy and sell orders.