Zacks Estimates Becomes First Premium Dataset on Quandl Financial Search Engine

Inside Market Data October 27, 2014 waterstechnology.com/imd

Volume 30, Number 3 FIX Market Data Protocol Nears Completion Content FoCus 3 Zacks Builds Operating Standards body FIX Trading Community is “We started out looking to make ITCH and Metrics Estimates Dataset finalizing the specification for a FIX Protocol- OUCH FIX standards. We held meetings with based market data standard that incorporates Nasdaq. Our analysis led us to conclude that Content FoCus elements of Nasdaq’s ITCH Protocol, though the industry would not be well served by simply 5 Millistream Adds GXG FIX does not plan a wholesale adoption of adopting the current Nasdaq protocols as is,” Markets Data ITCH semantics, as originally planned. Northey says, adding that “We concluded after Following analysis conducted earlier this year, extensive study that it is better to add new mes- DeLIveRy teChnoLoGIes FIX determined that building ITCH into FIX sages and a simple binary encoding to FIX and 6 McObject’s eXtremeDB was not the most suitable way to extend the to standardize on a new session layer based on Financial V6 Adds SQL, standard for market data, says Jim Northey, co- the Nasdaq protocols,” rather than standard- Python, Data Compression chair of FIX’s Global Technical Committee and izing FIX around ITCH. senior partner at LaSalle Technology Group, In May, FIX’s High-Performance Working DAtA ConsuMeRs citing limitations around expressing known val- Group began defining the functions and mes- 7 De Telegraaf Taps VWD for ues, missing fields and derivatives support. sage flows that it wanted to represent in >10 Financial Data

ADMIn & MAnAGeMent Zacks Estimates Becomes First Premium 9 Reg-Room Readies Intraday Alerts for Regulatory Dataset on Quandl Financial Search Engine Tracking System Toronto-based economic and financial search and Canadian listed companies; Zacks Earn- engine Quandl has added North American ings Announcements, which offers estimated earnings estimates data from Chicago-based announcement dates, estimation parameters CoLuMns Zacks Investment Research as the first instance and supplemental data for more than 5,000 4 oPenInG CRoss of fee-liable data on its web-based platform for publicly traded companies; and Zacks Sales Esti- Raising the ‘Standard’ in financial, economic and sociological datasets. mates, which provides sales earnings estimates Terms of Cooperation The Zacks content covers four core databases: for 5,000 North American companies. Zacks Earnings Estimates, which provides daily Quandl will soft-launch the data on its web- 5 heRD consensus earnings estimates for more than site on Monday, Oct. 27, which will require 5,000 US and Canadian listed companies; Zacks a paid subscription, though the vendor will 6 sCRoLLInG neWs Earnings Surprises, which provides 10 years of allow users up to 100 “preview” accesses estimated and actual earnings for 8,000 US to the data—which Zacks compiles in >3

Canadian Advisory Firm CFSI Signs MDA, Quartet to Vendor Partner Ecosystem Canadian business development advisory firm has held senior trading and research roles at Collaborative Financial Services Inc. (CFSI) Liquidnet, ITG and TD Securities, and also has signed deals to represent two Toronto- served as a consultant to the Investment based companies—startup market structure Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, and transaction cost analysis provider Market set up Market Data Authority (MDA) a year Data Authority and managed IT services pro- ago to provide market participants with analy- vider Quartet Service—to help both expand sis of market activity, liquidity provision and their presence and breadth of service among routing strategies. financial services clients in the region. MDA provides a cloud-based database of Chris Sparrow, former director of institu- tick data on Canadian markets that can gener- tional equities at RBC Capital Markets, who ate static reports and custom analytics >8

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SWT_WT11_AD210x297.indd 1 17/06/2011 17:31 Content Focus Zacks Estimates Becomes First Premium Dataset on Quandl Financial Search Engine

<1 consultation with analysts—free of greatly to launch with rather have us maintain a database, and charge before prompting them to sub- such a well-known send out queries to that database and pull scribe. Users will still be able to use many name with a great data into applications as needed.” of the vendor’s free-of-charge features, reputation.” As well as a flexible consumption model such as API access, the ability to down- Traditionally, Zacks that enables customers to subscribe to the load data in any format, and multiple has delivered its data specific datasets they require, Quandl’s export and visualization options. to customers via flat platform also reduces the administrative Since its launch in 2013, Quandl has CSV files, but lever- burden of dealing with traditional data Tammer focused on building access to more than aging Quandl’s plat- Kamel vendors, as users will not be tied in to 10 million time-series datasets, many of form will enable the multi-year contracts or lengthy vendor which are unrestricted and free of charge. vendor to deliver its data via APIs for the negotiation processes. However, Quandl founder and chief exec- first time, which will cater to startup firms “With Quandl, the way the customer utive Tammer Kamel says the ultimate and application developers who do not accesses the data is completely self-service. goal is for Quandl to be the numerical data have the resources to set up and manage They simply look to see what’s available, equivalent of Wikipedia, and to cover “all their own internal database structure, says they pick the datasets they want to sub- numerical data in the world,” including Bryant Sheehy, director of business devel- scribe to, and they don’t have to sign com- proprietary data. opment at Zacks Investment Research. plicated contracts, or talk to salespeople. To fulfill this goal, Quandl is now focus- “We’ve been getting a lot of inquiries We are pioneering a new model here that ing on building out fee-liable datasets, from startup-type companies developing is conducive to people with good ideas,” with Zacks’ consensus-based estimates financial applications for investors, both Sheehy says. representing the first set of paid premium retail and institutional, many focusing on For example, the access model is likely databases on the site. building new mobile apps for evaluating to suit hedge fund analysts who need data “Zacks brings a long-established repu- investments,” Sheehy says. “All of them to quickly test new strategies, but want to tation for quality data,” Kamel says. “It are looking to consume this data via an avoid signing “onerous” contracts with is strongly associated with earnings esti- API rather than traditional large flat CSV traditional data vendors, he adds. mates and sales estimates. It benefits us files through FTP accounts. They would Faye Kilburn

Content Focus Zacks Builds Operating Metrics Estimates Dataset

Zacks Investment Research is preparing The operating metrics data is geared Over the next six to nine months, the to add more detailed company data to towards more sophisticated investors vendor will focus on building out and its collection of North American earnings who want to dig into the “nitty-gritty” standardizing the operating metrics esti- estimates databases, to better support details of each company, Sheehy adds. mates data before adding it to its data- clients’ investment decisions. The data is compiled by combining base. Zacks also plans to make the data The vendor is currently developing sell- estimates of operating metrics from available on Toronto-based economic side estimates for a range of company analysts at sell-side firms, who typically and financial search engine Quandl’s operating metrics—such as same-store carry out detailed analysis on companies web-based platform, after announcing sales, passenger revenue miles for to generate valuation models for their this week that its existing content will airlines, and backlogs for homebuilders— institutional buy-side clients. be the first instance of fee-liable data on which will be added to its Earnings Esti- Quandl. mates and Earnings Surprises databases. Consensus Metrics “We are developing more sophisticated “Operating metrics for companies are “[Sell-side analysts] have valuation datasets that I intend to plug into Quandl non-financial metrics that actually move models that are quite detailed, plus they down the road. By the by time we’re stock prices. That also includes revenue try to factor in other inputs like macr- done, there will be a very robust set segments, so breaking a company’s oeconomic inputs and trends…. We of data on there,” which will cater to a revenue down to specific products like aggregate those valuation models into a new “underworld” of start-up businesses, iPhones, iPads and Macs for Apple, and single consensus valuation model, which Sheehy says. “That’s where I see the hardware versus software for IBM,” says makes it easy for the buy side to get a growth opportunities in the financial data Bryant Sheehy, director of business devel- single Wall Street projection view of the business.” opment at Zacks Investment Research. company,” Sheehy says. Faye Kilburn

waterstechnology.com/imd October 27, 2014 3

IMD102714.indd 3 10/24/14 1:40 PM OPENING CROSS Raising the ‘Standard’ in Terms of Cooperation

So, the industry may soon have a new others will be incentivized to follow. Canada. In the past week, the company standard protocol for market data distri- While the new standard does not has announced deals to represent Market bution: and not simply a de facto standard simply fold ITCH into FIX—which those Data Authority (MDA), a startup provider co-opted based on existing uptake, but involved deemed an unsuitable compro- of execution performance and transaction one specifically designed for market data mise because of some of ITCH’s short- cost analysis, and managed IT services needs that albeit incorporates the speed comings—it does draw on some of its provider Quartet Service. While CFSI will and bandwidth efficiencies of one such components, and even though Nasdaq is act as a sales agent for both to grow their protocol—Nasdaq’s much-imitated ITCH not currently directly involved in the initia- business, Quartet will also help CFSI grow protocol—into the FIX Protocol, a truly tive, its success will depend on an implicit its own business, by providing managed industry-driven standard that has been spirit of cooperation from the exchange infrastructure and hosting to support its created and evolved over more than a group to not assert any claims to its intel- longer-term aim of creating high-perform- decade with cooperation from partici- lectual property. To be fair to Nasdaq, ance monitoring solutions. In addition, pants on all sides of the capital markets. there’s no evidence that the exchange the initiative is already making good on The most-touted benefits of a market would crack down on the use of ITCH cross-leveraging clients’ services within data standard are the potential savings for or the plethora of ITCH-like standards an ecosystem of providers. MDA already end-user firms, by eliminating the need for adopted by other exchanges—after all, uses market data from Activ Financial, them to build and maintain interfaces to ITCH’s widespread adoption and famili- which enlisted CFSI to grow its presence different market venues. However, stand- arity benefits Nasdaq as well—though in Canada, while Quartet can provide ards also benefit venues themselves, some might be nervous, considering managed hosting in datacenters where reducing the need to invest in proprietary recent purchase eSpeed’s litigious history Activ has a point of presence for access technologies, lowering the risk of mis- surrounding its Wagner Patent governing to Canadian exchange TMX Group. communication between market partici- electronic futures trading, and considering Perhaps key to these and other initia- pants, and enabling far-flung emerging that FAST’s adoption was ended by a (ulti- tives is the realization that the capital markets to offer access to their services mately dismissed) lawsuit. And if there’s markets and financial data industries are via the same protocols used by their more one lesson to be learned from the FAST part of an intertwined community, and established counterparts. lawsuit, it’s that the spirit of cooperation that any community works better when its It’s ultimately this promise of a win-win needs to continue even in the face of participants work together. for all parties that makes everyone keen to legal action, with participants presenting a cooperate on standards, despite the pro united front, rather than backing away for bono time and investment involved. But fear of being sued. there’s still also some cajoling required to Also in the spirit of cooperation, Cana- ensure takeup. For example, whereas FIX dian advisory firm Collaborative Financial Trading Community targeted its previous Services Inc (CFSI) is gaining momentum data standard, FAST (FIX Adapted for towards its goal of providing solutions Streaming), at exchanges, FIX intends to that incorporate services from multiple start by promoting the standard initially vendors with whom it works as a sales to end users, and as momentum builds agent, representing companies seeking Max Bowie among this segment of the community, to enter or expand their presence in [email protected] Inside Market Data Max Bowie, Editor Elina Patler, Head of Editorial Operations Incisive Media Customer Services Tel: +1 646 490 3966 Lee Hartt, Group Publishing Director E-mail: [email protected] [email protected] Claire Light, Senior Marketing Manager Tel (UK): 0870 787 6822 Tel (International): +44 (0)1858 438421 Faye Kilburn, Deputy Editor Incisive Media Tel: +1 646 490 3967 55 Broad Street, 22nd Floor [email protected] New York, NY 10004 Tel: +1 646 736 1888 Giulia Lasagni, European Reporter Tel: +44 (0)20 7316 9143 Incisive Media [email protected] Haymarket House 28–29 Haymarket Alan Loader, Publisher London SW1Y 4RX Tel: +44 (0)20 7316 9733 tel: +44 (0)20 7316 9000 [email protected] fax: +44 (0)20 7930 2238

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4 October 27, 2014 waterstechnology.com/imd

IMD102714.indd 4 10/24/14 1:40 PM Content FoCus heRD

Millistream Adds GXG Markets Data victory taps Rodriguez for BizDev Chicago-based market data and Swedish data provider Millistream has panies to raise capital and offer their shares trading infrastructure, connectivity signed an agreement to distribute real- for trading by listing on the exchange. and co-location provider Victory time, delayed and end-of-day price data Rastin says customers benefit from Networks has hired former Livevol from Danish pan-European exchange the offering in two ways: those wanting president Dax Rodriguez as head GXG Markets, to improve its offering and to trade on GXG will receive updated of business development, responsible to give clients access to a broader range of prices via the feed, while investors that for expanding business relationships, market information, officials say. already own shares in companies listed contributing to sales and marketing The new data, which will be added to on GXG can receive intraday and end- activities, and setting strategic busi- a newly created feed within the coming of-day updates on the market value of ness plans. Before joining Victory, weeks, covers the trading venue’s complete their holdings. Rodriguez was partnership manager market data offering, including trade data Shares are traded via Stockholm-based at Cutler Group and spent almost and order book updates primarily for equi- GXG Global Exchange Group’s Tellus three years as president of options ties trading, but also covering some debt electronic trading platform, and are cleared trading and analytics provider Livevol, instruments, through Crest, prior to which he served as vice presi- says Per Rastin, “For us, it’s good to VP Securities, dent of client relations at alternative chief executive be a vendor that can Euroclear and trading system Ballista Securities, head of Millistream. offer a broad range Clearstream. of business development at the US Göteborg- of exchanges and GXG Glo- Futures Exchange, and vice president based Millis- information.” bal Exchange of business development for Deutsche tream is look- Group acquired Börse’s Market Data and Analytics ing to expand Per Rastin, chief executive, Millistream GXG Markets business. In his new role, Rodriguez its offering in 2010. reports to Victory chief executive John with the goal of improving its customers’ Peter Almberg, CEO of GXG says in Superson. trading strategies, and to provide banks a statement, “We have been working and brokerages with better end-of-day towards this solution to ensure that we Going Somewhere? and intraday updates on their positions are providing price data feeds through a and holdings. range of suppliers in ways more conven- Alert more people to your new “GXG is interested in getting its data ient to many of our issuing companies, position faster through Herd. out,” Rastin says, adding that Millistream their shareholders, as well as banks and Contact the IMD staff at: will make the data available to clients on investors. We believe this to be a great [email protected], request for a fee via a real-time API and step towards expanding GXG’s reach, and [email protected] through the vendor’s web service, end-of- augments the feeds already supplied to [email protected] day files and web solutions. “For us, it’s Bloomberg and others.” good to be a vendor that can offer a broad The addition follows Millistream’s June tech vet Barringer Joins security- range of exchanges and information.” rollout of a new feed of futures and scorecard to tighten Data Horsens, Denmark-based GXG Mar- options on indexes and equities data from security for Capital Markets kets—which was launched in 1998 as a Oslo Bors (IMD, June 10, 2014), in Paul Barringer has joined infor- Danish Authorized Marketplace and is response to demand from firms in Nor- mation security provider Security- supervised by Finanstilsynet, the Danish way and Sweden trying to improve their Scorecard as strategic sales director, Financial Supervisory Authority—focuses trading strategies. responsible for sales to corporate on attracting small and medium-size com- Giulia Lasagni clients as well as to financial >7

waterstechnology.com/imd October 27, 2014 5

IMD102714.indd 5 10/24/14 1:40 PM Delivery Technologies WALLBOARD McObject’s eXtremeDB Financial V6 Oct. 30: FISD Issue Brief and Networking Reception.

Adds SQL, Python, Data Compression Chicago. Organized by FISD.

Issaquah, Wash.-based in-memory database Edition also contains around 200 additional Details at: fisd.net provider McObject has released version 6.0 vector-based functions in its library, compared of its high-performance eXtremeDB Financial to around 100 when the vendor launched the Nov. 3–5: Asia-Pacific Financial Edition database, with additional support for product in 2012. “This benefits anyone build- SQL and Python programming languages, and ing equations, because instead of writing equa- Information Conference. Hong new market data compression functionality tions from scratch, you have them built into Kong. Organized by Incisive that can reduce time-series data to a quarter of the database, which saves time and means that its original size. analytical processing executes faster as it hap- Media and FISD. Details at: As a whole, the new features of eXtremeDB pens in the internal memory,” he adds. Financial Edition 6.0 are designed to increase As well as the additional programming siia.net/apfic/2014 the reliability and performance of the data- language support and statistical function, base, without impacting its cost effectiveness, McObject has introduced a new market data Nov. 7: Buy-Side Technology which is the driving force for most customers, compression algorithm, which leverages run- Awards. London. Organized by officials say. length encoding (RLE) to reduce the size of In previous iterations of the database, users stored columnar data such as trades, quotes Incisive Media. Details at: were able to access the vendor’s library of and other market data. waterstechnology.com/events vector-based functions—which includes stand- In testing with the Chicago Board Options ard mathematical functions commonly used in Exchange’s VIX index tick data, the vendor Nov. 18: European Trading data analysis, such as standard deviation, mini- was able to reduce the storage space required mum and maximum averages, and variance— to one-quarter of its pre-compression size, and Architecture Summit. London. via the C++, Java and .Net programming to speed up the process of reading the database languages. However, in response to customer by 21 percent, which could ultimately reduce Organized by Incisive Media. demand, the new version includes support for storage costs and accelerate processing power. Details at: SQL—which can be used in applications writ- The RLE compression is accompanied by ten in languages including C/C++, Python, a new distributed query processing capability, waterstechnology.com/events Java and Microsoft .Net, and also on its own, which enables users to increase the perform- via a command-line interface—and Python, ance of analytics such as risk calculations Dec. 8: Waters USA. New which allows programmers to code more by distributing them across multiple servers, York. Organized by Incisive efficiently, says Chris Mureen, chief operating CPUs or CPU cores. The vendor has per- officer of McObject. formed testing with industry-benchmarking Media. Details at: “One of eXtremeDB Financial Edition’s organization STAC and will release perform- key features is its library of vector-based sta- ance figures in due course. waterstechnology.com/events tistical functions, and we’ve introduced the “One of the challenges in capital markets ability to call those from SQL and Python. analysis is the size of the data,” says Ted Ken- Dec. 8: American Financial This increases the pool of developers that ney, marketing director at McObject. “For Technology Awards. New York. can use the database without a steep learn- example, in risk management you need real- ing curve, and enables faster development time and historical data sometimes going back Organized by Incisive Media. so firms can implement their ideas more years…. Distributed query processing lets you quickly,” Mureen says. do this more rapidly and efficiently.” Details at: The new version of eXtremeDB Financial Faye Kilburn waterstechnology.com/events

SCROLLING NEWS

>>Marex Spectron Grows Global coverage; Mediterranean swap price curves has released an API for firms to program- Commodities Data for gas oil, as part of its European distillates matically access its analytics. Firms can use Commodities and financial broker Marex data service; and a range of daily physical Infinigon’s API to integrate their systems with Spectron has expanded its market data and financial US ethanol curves. the vendor’s Echo product. offering with the addition of new content sets for fuels and metals. The broker has >>Infinigon Bows API Access to >>Barchart Adds US, Canadian Equity introduced a half-hourly curve update for Twitter Analytics Options Prices iron ore; global swap price curves for LPG New York-based Infinigon Group, a provider Chicago-based data vendor Barchart has and naptha, published three times per day; of social media analytics that monitors added US and Canadian equity options price a range of end-of-day price curves for US Twitter for price-impacting information and data to its cloud-based Barchart OnDemand fuel oil, completing the broker’s global fuel oil provides the resulting data to trading firms, service, allowing clients to request >8

6 October 27, 2014 waterstechnology.com/imd

IMD102714.indd 6 10/24/14 1:40 PM DAtA ConsuMeRs heRD

De Telegraaf Taps VWD for Financial Data <5 services firms, and for exploring new Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf has rolled its print edition from a local data provider. As a channels and use cases out stock and financial data from the Dutch result, the paper is not incurring high additional to sell the vendor’s subsidiary of German market data vendor VWD costs by extending the deal to publishing VWD’s products into financial Group, building on an existing deal to carry the content in print, de Rooij says. markets participants vendor’s data on its website with a new package As well as benefitting from an economically among exchanges, that officials say provides the newspaper with a advantageous package, he says De Telegraaf can broker-dealers and tier- user-friendly and comprehensive dataset for its now also rely on a ready-made, user-friendly one banks. Barringer print publication. solution that doesn’t require the newspaper to was most recently US The offering includes exchange price data, perform much work before sending the pages managing director of mainly from Amsterdam-based Euronext, as well to press. cGain Technologies, a as price data for funds, bonds and commodities, De Rooij says that following the deal, VWD technology and offshore says Richard de Rooij, business director at VWD is now providing all major Dutch newspapers development consul- Group Belgium, Netherlands and France, adding with market data, having already signed distri- tancy, prior to which he that the information is mainly targeted at retail bution agreements with publications including was chief executive of users, such as investors trading via online brokers. financial daily Financieel Dagblad, daily evening low-latency managed VWD provides the data on a daily basis at newspaper NRC Handelsblad, and Dutch news- infrastructure provider around 10pm local time as a ready-to-print PDF paper publisher Wegener, adding that VWD Burstream. Before file to De Telegraaf, which began publishing the Netherlands is currently looking at providing co-founding Burstream, data on Friday, Oct. 17 after a period of testing more publications in its distribution network Barringer spent four that started on Oct. 10. The data is published in with ready-to-print PDF file systems similar to years as US managing De Financiële Telegraaf, the newspaper’s financial that used by De Telegraaf. However, he notes director of IT consulting section. that smaller newspapers tend to offer the VWD and managed services Before signing the deal in early September, data only in their print versions since they do provider GPXS, and five the newspaper already carried market data from not have websites devoted to supplying financial years in various business VWD on its website under an agreement inked information. development roles at in 2011, but sourced financial information for Giulia Lasagni Hewlett Packard.

waterstechnology.com/imd October 27, 2014 7

IMD102714.indd 7 10/24/14 1:40 PM Organization & Strategy CFSI Signs MDA, Quartet to Vendor Ecosystem

<1 via PDF files or via a web-based grow the number starting to understand our approach and front-end interface. As well as “more tra- of financial clients what we’re trying to accomplish. Now ditional” types of volume-based analytics, and broaden the when we go to see a firm, they ask ‘What MDA also offers its own custom analyt- range of services it have you got today that’s interesting?’” ics, which include the ability to identify provides to them. Mulder says. which side of a trade is the “active party,” “Quartet has However, the deal will also help CFSI based on public data, which can help between 15 and build out and operate its own planned brokers, buy-side firms, regulators and 20 financial clients solutions from its suite of partner serv- trading venues understand which venues using us for any- Robert Bracey ices. “These will include technology brokers route to and execute on; and the thing from help- monitoring and management solutions, ability to identify “spray waves”—when a desk services and on-site support to using so we need people to help us support broker posts liquidity on multiple venues our infrastructure, data network and our those,” Mulder adds. simultaneously—which might be useful large IBM-based cloud environment,” CFSI already acts as Canadian distribu- for sell-side firms to perform competitive says Quartet president Robert Bracey. tor for UK-based data technology ven- analysis, and for buy-side firms to under- “How clients use our infrastructure varies: dor MDX Technology and data vendor stand who is providing liquidity. some run live servers on our gear; some Activ Financial. In fact, Activ’s data also “Ultimately, my interest lies in trying use it to run backup servers; and a lot just plays a key role in both MDA and Quar- to analyze the quality of market data and use it for disaster recovery… and for run- tet’s plans: MDA uses market data from its impact on execution performance,” ning tests and disaster simulations. So a lot Activ to populate its database, under a Sparrow says. “Basically, I created a com- of our clients are using a hybrid system, deal arranged by CFSI co-founder and pany that I wish had existed when I was where they have live servers on site, and sales and marketing head Will Kennedy in some of my previous roles.” backup servers on our hardware.” in his prior role as executive vice presi- But to bring the company to mar- Bracey says the area where CFSI will dent of business development at Activ. In ket and generate sales, Sparrow enlisted provide the greatest benefit for Quar- addition, firms using Quartet to provide CFSI based on its founders’ expertise in tet is around non-recurring consulting hosted IT services TMX Group’s co- the Canadian markets, and on knowing services. “Some of the clients don’t have location center and the Equinix Toronto CFSI co-founder and chief information the critical mass to do things they need proximity hosting facility can also access officer Dave Mulder for around 15 years. to do from a competitive point of view, broader datasets from Activ in those “My core competency is on product and or are obliged to do from a regulatory locations. analysis… and I think CFSI can add a ton standpoint… [so] we found we were get- “This kind of cross-pollination and lev- of value… as they build out their suite of ting dragged into the nuts and bolts of eraging each other’s services both helps partners,” he says. the financial world, and we realized that us save money, and also helps our clients In fact, CFSI has already helped MDA some specialist expertise would be good save money,” Davies says. establish a group of pilot evaluations at for our growth,” he says. Though not involved in this example, sell-side and buy-side firms and some aca- In addition, CFSI will offer Quartet’s MDA is also open to working with other demic institutions, says CFSI co-founder services to other potential clients that CFSI clients to expand its reach and and managing partner Jim Davies. may primarily be looking for a differ- potential audience, Sparrow says. “As a However, Quartet—which was ent service but could also benefit from startup, I’m trying to figure out what my founded in 1998—already has an existing general office automation, PC and server potential market is… so integrating with presence for its services among financial management, infrastructure monitoring other systems is a natural move,” he adds. firms, but is hoping that CFSI will help it and helpdesk services. “Customers are Max Bowie

SCROLLING NEWS

<6 current, end-of-day and historical >>Enso Gets More Cash from Icap to expansion and product innovation. This time, option pricing using Barchart’s OnDemand Fund Expansion Enso will use the funding to expand “heavily” APIs. The GetEquityOptions API enables Interdealer broker Icap has made a second, in both client delivery and product develop- customer to access price data, greek calcu- undisclosed investment in market intelligence ment, officials say. lations such as delta, gamma, theta and and analytics provider Enso, which provides vega, and implied volatility data. The data portfolio analytics on counterparty credit >>Teradata, Datawatch Ally for Data is sourced from exchanges including the risk, collateral management, and portfolio Visualization Chicago Board Options Exchange, the Inter- financing and treasury functions to hedge Big data storage and analysis provider Tera- national Securities Exchange, Nasdaq, the funds and asset managers. The investment data is making analytics from data visualiza- New York Stock Exchange’s Amex and follows an initial investment in 2013 via tion software vendor Datawatch available to Arca markets, BATS Global Markets and the Icap’s Euclid Opportunities early-stage seed its clients, allowing them to visualize data Montreal Exchange. funding program, to focus on geographic sources held in Teradata data warehouses,

8 October 27, 2014 waterstechnology.com/imd

IMD102714.indd 8 10/24/14 1:40 PM Administration & Management Reg-Room Readies Intraday Alerts for Regulatory Tracking System

New York-based technology startup Reg- officially published. ing specific rules and regulation related to Room is adding intraday alerts to its Reg- Currently, Reg- market data, such as guidance on market Track global regulatory tracking system Room allows users data reporting proposals issued by the to enable financial firms to receive timely to subscribe to FCA on Sept. 12 as part of the forthcom- updates on new and proposed rules and weekly or daily email ing MiFID 2 rollout in UK, or a July 30 regulations that are tailored to their spe- alerts from Reg- notice that the SEC has approved plans cific requirements or areas of interest, Track, but over the from FINRA to establish fees for real-time which they can use to stay abreast of mar- next few months, and historic datasets covering a sub-set of ket data-related regulatory changes. in response to cli- TRACE-eligible securities. Nick Paraskeva The Reg-Track System, which Reg- ent demand, plans Users can access further information on Room originally launched in 2013, cap- to add functionality the alerts via Reg-Room’s online portal, tures regulatory developments, final rules, to support intraday email alerts. and can export information to Microsoft proposed rules, concept releases, guidance Users can filter searches and alerts by Excel and Microsoft Word for easier dis- and enforcement actions from the RSS regulator, country, date range, or by the tribution within their firm, or can bring feeds of a wide range of global regula- type of entity, financial product or function the data directly into systems used by tors, including: the US Treasury, the within their firm that would be directly legal and compliance, and back-office US Securities and Exchange Commission, impacted by the regulation, so that alerts finance and risk management functions and FINRA; European regulators such only contain information relevant to the via an API. as the UK Financial Conduct Authority, user. For example, users can choose to see “Most firms didn’t have good technol- the European Commission, and national existing rules or receive updates from the ogy in place do this before the crash, and regulators in Germany, France, Italy, Spain SEC that only impact technology divisions since then the number of regulations has and Switzerland; Asia-Pacific regulators, or updates from FINRA that only impact multiplied. But still a lot of people are including the China Banking Regulatory hedge funds. still trying to manage regulatory change Commission; and international bodies “Different end users have different rules manually, and it’s hit-and-miss,” Paraskeva such as the G20 group of nations and the that they are required to comply with, so says. “Post-crash, regulations have become Bank for International Settlements’ Basel Reg-Track allows you to filter the rules more complex, and the changes are all Committee. for the ones you are interested in,” says happening at same time, which has created Once a regulator issues an update, the Nick Paraskeva, principal of Reg-Room. a bulge in the pipeline—but because of vendor produces a summary that describes “Other systems out there give you the the complexity of it all, you can’t just hire the key points of the development using raw feed of RSS updates from regulators, someone and train them up. That’s the fact-based statements, and includes direct but they don’t often have summaries or a reason for the bottleneck.” links to the underlying rules and regula- level of granularity to make them easier to To help firms manage the changing tions, as well as information on prior rules manage.” regulatory landscape, Reg-Track can also linked to the new change. The system also Though the scope of the system’s cov- be configured to display regulations with monitors speeches by executives from reg- erage is much broader than market data, an effective date in the future, which also ulatory bodies that reference rulemaking users can set up specific searches based allows firms to plan ahead for dealing with decisions, which could make firms aware on keywords such as “market data” or upcoming rule changes, Paraskeva adds. of upcoming rule changes before a rule is “pricing data” to generate alerts compris- Faye Kilburn

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such as documents, PDFs and log files, as signal linked to Coordinated Universal Time. eign and corporate debt, in response to well as live, machine-readable data. Tera- The deal will provide financial institutions— increased demand from regional and inter- data users can not only use Datawatch to initially in the UK, and later in Europe and national investors for the ability to invest in visualize important events as they happen, North America—with an independent times- offshore debt. The index family, Hang Seng but can also combine real-time data with tamp at the distribution point for compliance Markit iBoxx Offshore RMB Bond Index, will intraday and historical data to generate and audit purposes, and removes the need be calculated every Monday to Friday, and better-informed decisions. for time synchronization between various allows investors to include unrated bonds locations in the trading infrastructure. in their analysis of the investment-grade >>TMX Atrium to Distribute NPLTime and high-yield portions of the market, the TMX Atrium, the network provider subsid- >>Markit, Hang Seng Indexes Roll Out companies say. It also includes a compre- iary of Canadian exchange group TMX, Offshore RMB Bond Index hensive breakdown of the bond universe has signed a distribution agreement with Markit and Hong Kong’s index provider based on tenor, credit quality, sector and the UK’s national measurement institute, Hang Seng Indexes have launched a bond size. End-of-day closing values for the HSM the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), to index series that track the performance iBoxx will be distributed once a day, begin- distribute NPLTime, a certified precise time of offshore renminbi-denominated sover- ning Monday, Oct. 20.

waterstechnology.com/imd October 27, 2014 9

IMD102714.indd 9 10/24/14 1:40 PM DeLIveRy teChnoLoGIes FIX Market Data Protocol Spec Nears Completion

<1 an ITCH-like format within FIX. in developing the to create a protocol that is truly standard- “That work is still ongoing, but I would standard and pro- ized across all participants,” Northey says. say the specification is 85 percent com- viding feedback. “There still might be some pockets of plete. We are getting a high degree of con- FIX’s last resistance—for example, exchanges with fidence in the quality of the proposal as the attempt at creat- proprietary systems, or HFT firms that new market data standard… [and] we are ing a market data have invested in building interfaces to 40 getting to the point where we’ll be look- protocol, FAST, or 50 proprietary systems… but hopefully ing to build a reference implementation,” began successfully Jim northey that will a minority.” that will reduce variability in adoption by but ended in fail- However, though the intellectual prop- providing a concrete use case rather than ure after a lawsuit threatened users among erty behind ITCH is owned by Nasdaq, a paper specification that can be open to exchanges, banks and vendors, claiming having been originally created largely by interpretation, he says. an existing patent for its data compression Josh Levine of the Island ECN—since Northey hopes to complete the specifi- technology. The lawsuit was eventually dis- acquired by Instinet and then Nasdaq— cation by year-end and set up a reference missed, but not before US market partici- Northey notes that Nasdaq has not implementation, then get it approved by pants had abandoned the standard in favor objected to competing markets using the FIX organization and published as of proprietary binary protocols. While ITCH-based standards, adding that FIX is a standard before beginning the proc- FAST was originally invented to provide a deliberately steering clear of using new and ess of evangelizing for the new stand- bandwidth-efficient data standard to com- untested components, instead relying on ard. Then, rather than promoting its use bat rising options data volumes, increased well-established technologies to avoid any among exchanges, as it did with the FAST availability of high-bandwidth networks disputes over the new protocol’s pedigree (FIX Adapted for Streaming) Protocol, made it less important in a trading envi- and give it a greater chance of achieving he says the organization will start with ronment where binary protocols proved widespread adoption. banks, and “push outwards” to vendors most efficient for the ultra-low-latency “We haven’t had a good standard for and exchanges. “In truth, it’s hard for data requirements of high-frequency market data. We got part-way with FAST, exchanges to push standards. Standards trading—especially when the compression but it was complex, so each exchange had need to be driven by the consumers: the encoding and decoding consumed valu- a different version, and then the lawsuit banks and end users,” who will benefit able fractions of a second. hit,” he says. “We do know that we need from being able to standardize and reduce “I think the swing away from standardi- a market data standard in the industry. the number of disparate interfaces to trad- zation—which was prompted by sophis- Will it be this one? I can’t say, but at least ing venues and market data sources that ticated market participants demanding we will soon have a very well thought-out they need to develop and maintain—hence high-performance interfaces for high-fre- reference implementation as a starting reducing associated costs—he says, adding quency trading—is starting to swing back point.” that some banks are already participating again… and there is now an opportunity Max Bowie

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