Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) will go live with its new AMS/3.8 trading platform on 5 December, following the successful completion of testing by the bourse’s trading participants.
According to HKEx, the new system will increase capacity tenfold to 30,000 orders per second, scalable to 150,000 orders per second, and reduce latency to two milliseconds on an average trading day – which it says is 70 times faster than the current platform and better than the project target of nine milliseconds.
The new system will also broaden market data offered to HKEx members to the 10 best price levels, compared to five in the platform’s previous iteration. The market data broadcast rate will also be doubled to 2,000 stock page updates per second.
“Continuing to upgrade our platform infrastructure and market structure is a key part of our current three-year strategic plan, so the AMS/3.8 system upgrade is an important step for us,” said Charles Li, HKEx’s CEO. “AMS/3.8 is an interim move that will give us a good window to develop our next generation trading system to meet market needs, support our further growth and help maintain Hong Kong’s position as an international financial centre.”
During the first two weeks that AMS/3.8 is in operation, a fallback procedure will be in place to allow HKEx to return to AMS/3.5 if there are any issues with the new platform.
HKEx’s three-year strategic plan, of which the technology upgrade is a key pillar, was initiated in 2010 and is designed to bolster the bourse’s role as the primary gateway to China. Other reforms in the plan include attracting more renminbi-denominated listings, the extension of trading hours and the creation of a new data centre.