Across the market, businesses have been increasingly turning their attention to data quality and accessibility, seeking to enhance their offerings for buy-side clients with ample recent movement in the last few weeks.
Over recent months, historical Level 3 data provider BMLL has seen a surge in activity as it continues to expand its equities and ETF data coverage. Its products now include data from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), Cboe Europe Indices, and more recently this month, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
Speaking to The TRADE last week, Paul Humphrey, chief executive of BMLL, explained that these recent moves had come in response to client demand for enhanced coverage.
“Our clients and market participants overall are demanding increasingly comprehensive, high quality data sets to understand market behaviour and we are delighted to provide them with the insights they need to make more informed trading decisions.”
Data from the added exchanges are available to BMLL users across the buy- and sell-side, as well as global exchange groups. Other inclusions earlier this year include: Cboe Japan, Japannext, and Singapore Exchange.
In other exchange news, the Johannesburg stock exchange launched a joint venture with big xyt in a bid to offer greater accessibility to data analytics to international trading venues and firms of all sizes.
The JV – big xyt ecosystems – is set to offer the Trade Explorer data platform, recently launched in South Africa, to financial centres globally.
Speaking at the time, Leila Fourie, chief executive of JSE Group, said: “All trading venues understand the need for a market data business adjacent to the core mission of providing high quality markets.”
There has also been notable movement in bonds offerings, which included updates from Overbond, Mizuho EMEA, and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).
In May, Overbond entered into an agreement to integrate European fixed-income transaction data from Deutsche Börse into its AI-aggregated data feeds and automated bond trading.
With this move, Overbond plans to “generate a robust European fixed-income trading data set,” aimed at plugging the gap in the fixed income markets in Europe that continue to be challenges for traders. The firm said its combination with Clearstream transaction data would create “the most robust European AI training data set available for the benefit of a better informed fixed income in Europe”.
The following month, Mizuho EMEA joined Neptune network as axe dealer for bonds in a move linked to a desire from the buy-side to access higher quality data from liquidity providers.
Byron Cooper-Fogarty, chief operating officer at Neptune, at the time highlighted that “this has been a client driven addition, as buy-side traders and portfolio managers continue to ask for high quality data from liquidity providers such as Mizuho.”
More recently, ICE made some updates to its corporate bond offering, relaunching its sweeps protocol – ICE RMA – in response to market demand.
Peter Borstelmann, president of ICE Bonds, highlighted that there was a notable demand for improvement in the space and the development of a product superior to that already in the market.
Speaking to The TRADE, he explained: “We heard from our partners that they wanted a strong competitor in this space and nobody had yet been able to step [into] that capacity. We saw this as an opportunity to invest in something that we were the initial creators of and would be a nice complement to our existing ATS liquidity network […] we invested in both human capital and technology to bring an intuitive and easy product to market and the initial adoption and activity validates this investment.”
Also launched into the market in recent months were updates to FX offerings from several players. Earlier this month, August, Bloomberg announced that it had added a new suite of FX pricing quality tools in a bid to enhance RFQ pricing requests.
The tools – available to clients of its premier multi-bank FX trading platform (FXGO), through MISX, Bloomberg’s multi-asset reporting tool for electronic trading – allow price markers to more quickly identify where and why opportunities to price are being missed.
Tod Van Name, global head of foreign exchange electronic trading at Bloomberg highlighted the importance of this enhanced tool and the transparency and availability of real time information that it provides to their clients for trading operations.
“These new pricing quality analytics in MISX provide both buy- and sell-side market participants with unparalleled breadth and depth of analysis and output, that can help them make more informed trading decisions and achieve better outcomes.”
Guillaume Carreno, global head of electronic client connectivity at Crédit Agricole CIB, added: “The additional information, especially the “Best Alternative” data, has enabled us to identify areas where we can further improve the pricing quality for our clients. The productivity efficiency we gain with this new feature is an important added value.”
Similarly, Trading Technologies (TT) has been making a move to establish itself in FX, launching a new business line in June following its entry into the fixed income market for the first time in March with its acquisition of AxeTrading.
In August, TT acquired Abel Noser’s buy-side TCA subsidiary, building on its continued multi-asset data and analytics expansion.
“This acquisition enhances our appeal to the buy-side with an offering that spans multiple asset classes which we can fortify with the wealth of anonymised data harnessed through our platform,” said Trading Technologies chief executive officer Keith Todd.
Elsewhere, players have made enhancements aimed at assisting traders with their operational needs, seeking to optimise, secure, and streamline processes.
In June, futures industry technology provider FIA Tech enhanced its Trade Data Network (TDN) to support the operational resiliency demands of clearing firms utilising the platform.
From now, users of TDN are able to securely replicate and store all trading activity at any exchange connected to the network, resulting in speedier recovery in the event of a systemic outage.
Additionally, the following month, FlexTrade and TRAction announced a new integration aimed at alleviating the “operational burden” of transaction reporting on the buy-side trading desk.
Its system users can use this update in daily transaction reporting processes, by automatically reporting their data through the TRAction platform in the appropriate format. (Spark EMS users can also use TRAction for Emir, Mifir, ASIC, MAS and Canadian reporting).
At the time, the pair claimed that this direct integrated approach “removes formerly manual tasks, reducing errors and improving quality”.
More recently, MarketAxess announced plans to acquire multi-asset algorithmic trading provider Pragma, betting on this move as a sure way to enhance its clients’ workflows.
“Our acquisition of Pragma underscores MarketAxess’ commitment to innovating, integrating, and providing our clients with quantitative, AI-powered technology solutions powered by proprietary data designed to simplify and enhance their workflows,” said Chris Concannon, chief executive officer of MarketAxess.
David Mechner, founder and chief executive of Pragma, added: “Pragma and MarketAxess share a common mission of using technology and automation to improve trader efficiency and generate superior trading outcomes for investors.”
These recent surge in activity, across various sectors and asset classes, makes clear how seriously firms are taking demands from the market. Providers are demonstrably taking note of the market’s call for better and more accessible data, acutely aware that falling behind the client demand curve now will be increasingly detrimental to business in the long run.
Whether it be through acquisitions to “plug gaps,” joint ventures to share expertise, or straightforward investment in technological updates, what is clear is that providers across the board know where priorities need to lie as the market undergoes significant change.
Driven by mounting regulatory pressures, increased globalisation, and general uncertainty as regards future trading rules, the need for better data is clear. It’s do or die.