At the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association Conference (SIFMA) last week, Aegis Software, the developer of Athena, an EMS for global equities, futures, options and foreign exchange, announced that it has achieved independent software vendor (ISV) status for the iMpact data feed on The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), an electronic marketplace for trading energy futures and OTC commodity products for oil, natural gas, power and emissions.
iMpact provides connectivity to ICE pricing, and is seen as the replacement for ICE's FIX interface to market data. Support for ICE's iMpact is available immediately from Aegis. Using the iMpact data feed, Athena users can execute several milliseconds faster for spread trading, such as intra-market (calendar) spreads and inter-market (crack) spreads, or when pursuing arbitrage opportunities across exchanges, such as natural gas trading on ICE vs. CME/NYMEX.
"The entire industry is on the move," says Norm Friedman, vice president, Aegis Software. "ICE is offering the new iMpact feed, CME is going with FAST, and NYSE Euronext has deployed the Common Customer Gateway (CCG), all focused on reducing trading latency. And it's not just exchanges and ECNs; it's the buy-side and sell-side too. Everyone is obsessed with performance."