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Creating A Globally Connected Financial Community

PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Connectivity is the lifeblood of the trade lifecycle as it plays a vital role in order creation, order placement, trade execution, clearing, settlement, reporting and market data delivery. The ideal connectivity provider offers an established community of market participants that includes buy-side firms, sell-side firms, inter-dealer brokers, liquidity venues, market data providers, independent software vendors and clearing / settlement firms.

Communities enable buy-side firms, sell-side firms and interdealer brokers to quickly and cost-efficiently consume a broad range of trade lifecycle services. A Financial Extranet gives all application vendors – exchanges, ATSs, MTFs, ECNs, OMS / EMS vendors, order routing specialists, market data vendors, FX platforms and clearing firms – the opportunity to promote and sell trade lifecycle services to a global community of capital market participants.

Performance engineered for electronic trading, the IPC Financial Extranet creates a paradigm that has transformed the way capital market participants conduct business with one another. Through a single connection, members of the IPC extranet can link to one another and seamlessly communicate, transact, receive and distribute information in an open trading ecosystem.

Through IPC’s thriving trading ecosystem, application vendors can:

  • Greatly extend their reach into the global capital markets – in the Americas, EMEA and APAC
  • Improve the visibility of their services in the IPC community
  • Cost effectively market and sell their services through IPC’s partner program for application vendors
  • Benefit from flexible solutions that meet collocation, hosting and connectivity needs

Built on an IP/MPLS backbone, the highly scalable, reliable and secure IPC Financial Extranet supports a number of industry standard protocols, including FIX. The network is engineered to be fully resilient to provide clients with 100% SLA.

Global Capital Markets

THE IPC FINANCIAL EXTRANET

  1. An exclusive focus on the financial services industry
  2. Extensive experience in delivering network services
  3. A trading ecosystem comprising an established community of market participants
  4. “Follow-the-sun” 24x7x365 world class customer service and meeting stringent SLAs
  5. Reaching virtually every trading destination across the globe – developed, emerging and frontier markets
  6. Connectivity throughout the trade lifecycle – order creation, order placement, trade execution, clearing, settlement, reporting and market data delivery

  1. Coverage across multiple asset classes – equities, fixed income, currency, commodities and their derivatives – futures, options, swaps
  2. A cost-efficient managed network
  3. Deep knowledge of trading routes
  4. Agility to adapt to the ever-changing global regulatory landscape

Financial Extranet

Learn more about how to leverage the advantages of IPC’s Financial Extranet to get a competitive advantage for your firm. Contact an IPC account representative at IPC offices worldwide or visit www.ipc.com/extranet.

FPL News Sept 2011

FPL: Supporting the Trading Community

Once a conversation point reserved for technologists, the wide scope of activities currently being conducted by FPL is now generating wide industry attention. FPL is addressing the real business issues impacting multiple areas of the trading community on a global scale. Here is a brief insight into what the organisation has been working on over the summer months and what it will be delivering to market participants later in the year. 

Understanding Buy-Side Needs

To understand and more effectively support the changing needs of the buy-side trader, FPL has formed buy-side focused working groups. Earlier this year, in an effort to achieve a more consistent response from the broker-dealer community, regarding broker reporting of the execution venue on each fill, FPL published a best practices document to help resolve these challenges. Over recent months, FPL has worked closely with buy-side representatives as they have approached their brokers to encourage adoption of these practices and this activity is planned to continue as we progress into quarter 4. The FPL EMEA Business Practices Subcommittee is also currently reviewing the recommended best practices so they can also be encouraged for adoption within the local market. 

An additional area currently under the spotlight, by the FPL Americas Buy-Side Working Group, is post-trade allocations. Presently many firms are identifying a common point of failure when it comes to allocating and confirming trades using the current model. To help alleviate this risk the group is exploring the use of bi-lateral FIX for equity allocations. FIX offers functionality within this area and the group is looking at how it could increase adoption. The initial work has focused on seeking to develop a common method that is acceptable to both the buy and sell side community utilising FIX and commencing the creation of best practice documentation. We look forward to hearing more on this initiative in the coming months. 

Raising Awareness of Risk Management

Early in 2011, the FPL Risk Management Working Group released an initial set of guidelines which recommended risk management best practices in equities electronic trading for institutional market participants. These were made available to the industry for review and since this time very valuable feedback has been achieved. Earlier this summer the group updated the guidelines and also extended their scope to support derivatives trading. The enhanced guidelines were shared with the FPL membership for their review during the month of August. This included review by the FPL EMEA Business Practices Subcommittee to ensure issues impacting the region were also considered and FPL is aiming to release the updated guidelines to the market in late 2011. 

Additional to this, the FPL Americas Buy-Side Working Group has also commenced an initiative focused on risk mitigation. The group is looking at the potential to increase the use of test symbology for all electronically traded asset types to encourage more secure, reliable and compliant business processes. We look forward to hearing more about this initiative as it progresses.

 

Supporting Regulatory Developments 

Encouraging regulators to develop an increased understanding of the benefits that free, open and nonproprietary standards present to the trading community and how they can be applied to enable market participants to more easily and effectively meet new regulatory requirements, continues to be a central goal of FPL. To support this effort, FPL continues to meet with regulators and respond to regulatory proposals expressing the value this approach presents. 

Additionally, from a European perspective FPL has also been focused on the MiFID review which has raised important concerns around post-trade transparency and generated a desire by market participants to lead the changes needed to address these concerns. The Market Model Typology (MMT) initiative has been initiated by the Federation of European Securities Exchanges (FESE) and is supported by a number of leading data vendors. It aims to reduce the level of complexity of equity market data and significantly improve market transparency, by standardising trade flags across trading venues in Europe, including lit, off book, dark and OTC trading. 

The standardisation of post-trade data is a pre-requisite for effective data consolidation and will be required regardless of which of the three options currently proposed by the European Commission are chosen under the revised MiFID directive. The reduction in complexity will also deliver cost benefits to the industry by reducing the financial implications of market data processing. 

As FPL’s membership represents the cross section of firms that will be using the consolidated trading data, in late spring the MMT Steering Committee expressed a desire to work with the FPL community to gain member firm advice on how the new standards should be applied. In August, the MMT Steering Committee held its first meeting with FPL members and initial areas of focus were identified. We look forward to hearing more about this initiative as it progresses over coming months. 

Increasing FIX Adoption in the Fixed Income Markets

FIX has achieved mass adoption for front-office equities trading, and its use is steadily expanding across additional asset classes. To support this growth, FPL is currently working on a number of initiatives so that the benefits of increased efficiencies and cost savings enjoyed by the equity trading community, can be extended to the trading of these asset classes. 

In June, FPL welcomed the decision of a group of 12 leading investment banks to jointly engage with existing and emerging fixed income market venues and ISVs to promote increased use of FIX and other open standards such as FpML, across the trading life-cycle of all fixedincome products. This initiative was developed as Dodd–Frank reforms seek to achieve greater market transparency, by requiring most types of OTC derivatives to be cleared through clearing houses and traded on swaps execution facilities (SEFs). This is predicted to generate a surge in new market venues in the US. Similar reforms are also expected to emerge from the upcomin
g MiFID II regulations in Europe. 

Over the summer months the FPL Global Fixed Income Technical Subcommittee has worked with the group and will continue to do so as we move into quarter 4. They are focused on identifying any further functionality needed to ensure FIX can effectively support the evolving business needs of the fixed-income markets and incorporating this, in addition to producing best-practice guidelines that encourage FIX use in a standardised manner and achieve maximum industry-wide benefit. 

 

Expanding FIX Support for Foreign Exchange Trading 

To enable FIX to more effectively support foreign exchange (FX) trading, over the summer FPL launched an initiative to improve FIX coverage of exchange-traded and OTC FX options. Initially focusing on vanilla options and simple strategies (including non-deliverable currencies) and then moving onto exotics and more complex strategies, the work of this group is expected to continue well into quarter 4. 

Creating a Benchmark for Latency Measurement 

FPL is focused on developing standards that address business challenges and latency measurement, due to its lack of standardisation, is a current area of focus. Without industry benchmarks, making omparisons and understanding the ever-decreasing latency levels reported by firms can cause much confusion. For example, there are many points in the transaction of a trade where latency could be measured and currently there are no industry-wide recommendations as to which point this should be. Additionally, latency is often quoted as a single number; whilst the latency of a single order can be reflected as a single number, the reality is that exchanges process many thousands of orders each day, some of which are faster than others. Unsurprisingly, the latency numbers often quoted, however, relate to the trades that achieved the strongest esults and this can be just a small proportion of those overall. 

A further challenge is the actual process of measurement across disparate locations. To measure latency in different locations, a common timing device is needed at either end of the communications link and currently only proprietary communication protocols are available to market participants. 

Keen to address these challenges and increase efficiencies in this area, late last year FPL launched the FIX Inter-Party Latency (FIXIPL) Working Group. Since its formation, group members have been working to develop the industry’s first free, open and non-proprietary standard, to consistently measure the latency of a trade as it travels through systems at exchanges, trading venues and investment banks. Additional to this, the group is also preparing a set of industry guidelines to encourage common latency reporting to enable like-forlike comparisons to be achieved. Testing of the new standard was conducted in three independent real-world environments by separate FPL member firms earlier this year. This has been followed by further testing over the summer months to incorporate additional functionality that will meet all comprehensive business needs and ensure the standard effectively supports industry requirements when it is released to the market in quarter 4.

Expanding the FPL Community 

FPL continues to work with members in different regions globally to support local trading communities. In response to local FPL member firm requests over recent months, FPL has launched new subcommittees for the German and Nordic trading communities. 

Each group is focused on more effectively addressing local electronic trading needs and providing educational opportunities for market participants to develop a stronger understanding of how increased use of the FIX family of standards could encourage increased marketwide efficiencies and cost savings. Following initial meetings each group has now created a list of areas that they would like their committee to focus on and is presently prioritising these activities ready for their commencement in coming months. 

These are just some of the many initiatives currently underway by FPL, all ultimately focused on supporting the evolving business needs of the trading community. Participation in these initiatives is open to FPL Member firms and we encourage their involvement, for more information please contact the FPL Program Office by email at FPL@fixprotocol.org. If your firm is not a member of FPL, but would be interested in finding out more about how to join please contact Bernie Simon, FPL Membership Relations Manager by email at bernie.simon@fixprotocol.org.

The RCM Experience

RCM’s Head of Asia Pacific Trading, Kent Rossiter, unmasks the Asian trading scene, sharing insights into how RCM navigates the unlit landscape, identifying the effects of dark liquidity and highlighting ways brokers can facilitate better buy-side decision making.
FIXGlobal: What are the main benefits of dark liquidity in Asia?
Kent Rossiter 2011Kent Rossiter, RCM:One of the major challenges in Asia has always been accessing liquidity without other parties in the market taking advantage of your position and your need to complete the order. In cases where liquidity is scarce, knowledge that a relatively large order is being worked can expose investors to various risks. In such situations, it is  advantageous for knowledge of the deal whilst it is being worked to be discreet until the order is filled. In dark pools run by brokers we can get priority on our orders through queue-jumping.
Dark pools support such an approach as they allow large block orders to be worked without showing size. In this way, trading in dark pools allows a trader to access a broker’s own internal order flow, without being gamed by the market that would otherwise risk non-fulfillment or less efficient pricing. As a result, size trading becomes the norm in dark pools and a trader gets to see blocks that may never have been available otherwise. With no information leakage we are not disadvantaged by the fading you see on lit venue quotes. From a personal perspective, the challenges that arise from dealing across a number of venues and the resulting increased use of technology make the role more exciting and satisfying.
FG: How do you limit information leakage in dark pools?
KR: With the exception of broker internalization engines, the trade sizes found in dark pools are often multiple of what they are on the exchange. So having fewer, but larger prints reduces information leakage, and in many cases we can get done on our size right away. Minimizing the number of times a print hits the tape reduces the chance of this footprint being picked up and working against the balance of your order. That said, broker internalization engines do their part well, keeping any spread savings among the two broker’s clients instead of giving it up to the general market.
FG: If you decide to seek dark liquidity, how do you decide between broker internalizers and block crossing networks?
KR: The type of dark venues being used for various trades (i.e. between block crossing networks and brokers) are different. As I mentioned, brokers for the most part are matching up little prints that otherwise would have been time-sliced in the general market, and when using these venues the goal is often to save a few basis points along the way while you work an order. You are not often micro-managing each fill, but through the process we are getting spread capture and price improvement. The type of stock you are often trading in these internalization engines are often larger, more liquid stocks; the type of orders often worked by algos.
Block crossing networks on the other hand, while still matching up electronically, are probably more confidential, and take up the function of what brokers still do upstairs – putting blocks together – so size is the real focus here. Both types of dark pools use the primary market for price sourcing since the vast majority of trades get printed at or within the best bid and offer. As the primary markets become too thin, it can cause price formation problems.
While it is not specific to the consideration of dark pools as an extra execution venue, we have to consider potential increased book out costs if we do use dark pools (except via aggregators, since we would only be using one counterparty), just as we have had to for years when deciding whether to execute a block with a single broker versus multiple counterparties. As dark pools proliferate there is an increased chance that we may not have part of our order in that pool at just the right time to take advantage of flow that may be parked there. Dark pool aggregators are aiming to provide the buy-side solutions to this.
FG: How much is fragmentation affecting your trading?
KR: The industry is not yet able to understand the full extent of how dark pools affect trading; by its nature, there is no clear record of all the trades executed in the dark. A lot of the trades done in the dark get no special discerning tag on the tape, and data capture standardization issues still abound. It is this ‘dark’ nature that protects the confidentiality of clients and their actions.
Fragmentation is a double-edged sword; it allows more competitive liquidity to enter the market which can bringspread costs down and it has spawned innovation. Yet, there may well come a point where it becomes cumbersome and challenging to retain perspective as can be considered the case in the US. Several dozen  venues, and the vast web of technology that is needed to piece the market back together present a number of challenges. However, fragmentation is part of the natural evolution of markets, and I expect this to continue in Asia, except in those markets where it is not allowed.
FG: What are the challenges of fragmentation, and how do you need to react to it?
KR: The challenge includes calculating the benefits using these tools, and gauging which brokers are doing the best job of getting the best price. As fragmentation in Asia grows so will the concern of how market data is being calculated and how this will impact pre and posttrade TCA benchmarks. This causes core market behavior assumptions to change with regards to which trades should or should not be included in market metrics. As aggregators step in, it also changes the behavior of the buy-side trader so they can view in real-time the FIX tags of ‘last venue’ to see where they are getting filled, which may lead to modifying whom they are executing with.
Fragmentation has affected trading making it more difficult for sales traders to source liquidity as they now need to check various pools for the best price before executing. Brokers’ technology allows them to do this automatically and much quicker than would be the case manually. As fragmentation increases, and more lit and dark venues arise, more and more technology development will be needed to ensure best execution.

From the Trader’s Desk: India and Hong Kong

RCM’s Head of Asia Pacific Trading, Kent Rossiter, points out some of the good and bad of Indian SOR and reflects on Hong Kong market structure.

Kent Rossiter, Head of Asia Pac Trading, RCM

India

Are Smart Order Routers (SORs) in India working well?

SORs sure are working in India. I am not sure what is more of a raging success in the Asian equity SOR world, India or Japan, but the cost savings estimate numbers we are hearing are evidence enough to suggest that Indian SOR development is a big plus.

For ages, there have been two meaningfully big markets; the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE). Up until a year ago, when Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) opened the playing field up, investors who wanted the liquidity of both had to do so by manually monitoring their screens. This was painfully labor intensive and with the thin displayed liquidity of bids and offers, difficult to actually execute. You would often find fills from one exchange or another being executed at inferior prices to the other as a dealer had their eyes off the ball. Those executions were inevitably followed by a conversation with a dozen excuses. I would be told what I was seeing on my screen was not the real situation, but a latency delayed picture.
For the most part we are only using brokers with SOR for our Indian executions, and these brokers co-locate servers so latency is no longer a concern. We are getting fills at the best prices available and from two pools of liquidity where we may have only had one in the past. Only if the order is really small would we limit ourselves to one exchange in an effort to save on ticketing charges.
SOR is just the most recent visible step in the broader trend of the evolution of markets. Accordingly, the buy-side and sell-side traders have to educate themselves and keep up.

What are the issues with Indian SOR?

It is the lack of interoperability at the post-trade clearing level that has limited the true savings many investors would have benefited from otherwise. This is a challenge that SEBI continues to address.  The lack a central clearing counterparty for the NSE and the BSE causes settlement costs to be about twice what they would be if only one exchange were used, and this is a consideration for most institutions when deciding whether or not to use two exchanges. If the exchanges and SEBI could reach a solution in terms of interoperability arrangements for SORs, the cost savings and benefits of SOR usage could be passed to the end users.  Until then, its true potential remains yet to be uncovered.

What do you hear from your brokers in India?

India is a unique market with the way stocks are quoted out to two decimals, yet market depth is often extremely thin. SOR and algo usage have greatly tightened those spreads as systems can refresh and adjust quote prices quickly. Being able to access liquidity on both venues increases the total liquidity at hand as compared to other markets where flow is concentrated on the primary exchange. One broker’s estimate of India’s NIFTY50 stocks puts savings in a range of 5-8 bpts on average for clients using their SOR.

Many trading systems used by buy-side trading desks are unable to split an order that is executed across two venues for confirmation purposes. While RCM’s EMS can handle dual markets seamlessly, some of our peers are using systems which do not accommodate multiple exchange fills. One of the largest brokers with SOR connectivity in India has told me that only about 10% of their clients are demanding dual exchange fills, which is surprising as that same broker says using a SOR in India has lead to an average performance improvement of about 10 bpts. This broker says the worst case savings is as low as 2 bpts, and they have had discussions with some clients as to what the minimum order value needs to be before it makes sense using both exchanges.

That is dependent on the clearing and custodial fees of the client, but generally the order will be $250k or more. Unfortunately it is not as simple as setting a minimal threshold because it would vary widely on a stock by stock basis, and is not consistent as to which stocks provide the least or most savings.

Hong Kong

What is the status of broker internalization engines in Hong Kong?

Internalization engines have been under much controversy in Hong Kong of late.  HSBC’s StockMax internalization engine was to include retail flow, but their license was amended at the eleventh hour limiting use to only professional investors. Many institutional investors feel this is too bad, and hope it is a temporary delay as regulators study the pro’s and con’s of off-exchange liquidity. As I understand it myself, HSBC’s retail investors themselves had been expecting to have their orders benefit from StockMax pricing.  They expect their trades to get the best price, not just what’s being quoted on the primary exchange.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) currently enjoys a statutory monopoly for the operation of a ‘stock market’ in Hong Kong.  Alternative Trading System (ATS) operators in Hong Kong have to report their trades to HKEx, and also exchange partner’s have to pay 0.5 bps for each side of the trade regardless of whether or not the transaction was conducted in the HKEx or through an alternative liquidity venue. Moreover, HKEx owns the clearing house, Hong Kong Securities Clearing Co (HKSCC), which clears and settles the trades, another expense to ATS. With the thin margins of many dark pools these costs can add up quickly.

In Hong Kong the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has begun requiring brokers with internalization engines (Type 7 license) to identify those executions done in their internalization engines. I think I speak for my peers in saying we would like the HKEx to make this information public. At the moment there is no differentiation seen on the reporting tape for the types of off-exchange prints.

How does this compare to broker internalization engines in other markets?

The amount of liquidity in the various broker’s internalization engines really differs. In Japan and Australia for example, there is no stamp duty, so frictional costs are lower. Depending on the broker, there could be a lot of HFT strategy flow included in those engines. Hong Kong, on the other hand, even with its wider spreads, does not have as much HFT participation, but still has plenty of dark pool activity. Another incentive for market-makers to trade in Japan is their ability to price inside the spread with just a touch. The cost of getting price priority in Japan is relatively cheap.

All investment involves risks. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

The views and opinions expressed in this document, which are subject to change without notice, are those of RCM Asia Pacific Limited and/ or its affiliated companies at the time of publication.

Some of the information contained herein including any expression of opinion or forecast has been obtained from or is based on sources believed by us to be reliable, but is not guaranteed and we do not warrant nor do we accept liability as to adequacy, accuracy, reliability or completeness of such information obtained from or based on external sources.

The information contained herein including any expression of opinion is for information purposes only and is given on the understanding that it is not a recommendation nor investment advice and any person who acts upon it or otherwise changes his or her position in reliance thereon does so entirely at his or her own risk without liability on our part.

This is not a recommendation or offer to buy or sell or a solicitation or incitement of offer to buy or sell any particular security, strategy or investment product.

 

How are CSAs being Used?

By Clare Rowsell

Unbundling Explained

By Clare Rowsell

CSAs in Asia

By Clare Rowsell
ITG’s Clare Rowsell discusses the advantage of unbundling for portfolio managers and how it improves services for end investors, touching on global models for Commission Sharing Agreements (CSAs), local regulations for CSAs and the utility of online platforms.
Click on the links below to view the videos or visit our Youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/FIXGlobalonline.

Unbundling Explained
How are CSAs Being Used?
To Unbundle or Not to Unbundle?
Regional Differences in CSAs

Open for Discussion: Brazil HFT

By Christian Zimmer, Hellinton Hatsuo Takada, Ji Kong Chan

Christian Zimmer, Head of Quantitative Trading and Research, Itaú Asset Management and co-author of ‘High Frequency Trading in Brazil: Mirage or Miracle?’, originally printed in the June issue of FIXGlobalTrading, responds to reader questions about co-location and exchange pricing models.

Ji Kong Chan, Sell-side Quant/HFT DMA, Tokyo:

I shall approach my follow-up comments, focusing on two key words: 1) “increment in HFT trading volume” and 2) “cost reduction program does not exist”

1) “increment in HFT trading volume”

Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) implemented Arrowhead (for equities) in January 2010. Over the past 18 months, the percentage of co-located trades (compared to all trades through the TSE) have almost tripled. For ease of categorization, I treat high frequency trades as mostly constituted of trades coming from co-location, which I argue is close to the truth. I hope the majority will agree that there is not a clear-cut definition of HFT, let alone a viable methodology for segregating HFT and non-HFT trades. This is probably why I have not encountered any reliable statistics comparing how much HFT was being done before and after Arrowhead.

2) “cost reduction program does not exist”

All else being equal, the fixed costs borne by brokers and payable to the TSE are arguably higher post-Arrowhead. That said, the variable costs take on more significance.

Christian ZimmerChristian Zimmer:

I totally agree with Mr. Chan that the use of co-location trades as a proxy for high frequency trades is the best available approach. BM&FBOVESPA uses form of intraday trade frequency, but this measurement is open to many criticisms. On one hand, the identifying the type of trade relies on identifying the final investor. Using this method of identification has two major problems. First, no one else has this information, and thus, the statistics cannot be replicated. Second, many big firms identify their trades under an omnibus account and this must be properly treated.

Having acknowledged these issues, it is still not clear what threshold is used for high frequency trades and why exactly this level is used for identifying the trading as high frequency. Bearing in mind that in most cases the nature of the HFT strategies requires low latency, it seems to be the best available alternative to use the co-location numbers. But what about proximity hosting? Especially in the Brazilian market where equity and future markets’ co-location facilities are separated and not allowed to communicate, you need proximity for strategies like index arbitrage. Further, some players, like Itaú Asset have fast direct lines (DMA3) that come close to proximity solutions and can be fast enough for most of the strategies that use short-term directional exposures.

As HFT is normally VERY cost sensitive, the additional costs for co-location are important. It is mainly a fixed cost, but when it is paid via soft dollars by the broker, the variable cost per trade increases. If the HFT pays the co-location costs, it is just a simple break-even analysis. Can you make a sufficient amount of trades that will allow you to pay the costs?

Finally, we do not have the number of international players split up by HFT and non-HFT (using the exchange’s nomenclature).

Click here to read the original article, High Frequency Trading in Brazil: Mirage or Miracle?.