The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has launched ASX Trade, its new platform for equities and derivatives trading, which it claims is among the fastest in the world.
Powered by exchange group Nasdaq OMX's Genium INET platform, ASX Trade is part of the ASX's plan to step-up its low-latency capabilities, expand capacity and extend its co-location offerings in preparation for the arrival of exchange competition in Australia in Q1 2011.
ASX Trade improves the exchange's latency from 30 milliseconds to 300 microseconds, while capacity has been increased from 20,000 orders per second before the upgrade to 100,000 orders per second.
“ASX Trade offers market participants a trading experience as fast as anywhere in the world,” said Jeff Olsson, ASX group executive, technology. “Latency today is 100 times faster than it was only two years ago.”
The ASX is currently dividing itself into three branches to better withstand the arrival of competitors: Volume Match, a block trading service; Pure Match, which is aimed at high-frequency traders, and Trade Match, which is designed for traditional equities traders.
The activation of ASX Trade also follows the upgrade of the ASX Trade 24 futures platform on 11 October 2010, which was intended to improve low-latency trading on the firm's futures market.
ASX is working on a merger with the Singapore Exchange, following the signing of an agreement between the two venues in October 2010. ASX's main competitor is expected to be pan-Asian multilateral trading facility Chi-X Global, which plans to launch its Chi-X Australia during 2011.