BATS Trading, a US equity trading venue, has released TOP, its new top of book market data feed.
BATS TOP will offer clients up to a 66% reduction in events and an 84% reduction in bandwidth compared to BATS’ PITCH market data feed and will be free of charge. BATS recommends 10 megabits of bandwidth to receive the TOP market data feed.
“With BATS matching 9 to 10% of all US equity trade volume each day, and as trading volume continues to increase on our system, the number of quotes and trades we disseminate in our market data feed increases, requiring additional bandwidth and processing power by our subscribers,” said BATS chief executive Joe Ratterman, in a statement. “If your firm’s trading applications only require top of book quotes and do not depend on depth of book, our new TOP protocol offers a significant reduction in required bandwidth and processing power.”
“The announcement of TOP, combined with our longstanding free market data policy and our recent agreement to provide free, real-time quotes and last trade data to Yahoo! Finance, is evidence that BATS is making markets better for participants who are frustrated with the industry’s current market data environment,” he added.