Reference data is reaching all aspects of the trade lifecycle, and transaction engines are a fast-growing consumer. This was most recently demonstrated by Lava Trading’s recent adoption of AIM’s data management platform in order to incorporate Telekurs Financial’s data into its transaction engine.
New York-based Lava Trading, now owned by Citigroup (see sister newsletter Transaction Networks & Technologies, July 2004), uses the equities end of day pricing, corporate actions and options data internally to support its transaction product offering for clients, primarily to ensure clients’ positions and portfolios are balanced.
Lava Trading has used both pricing and corporate actions from Thomson Financial’s ILX, an unlikely source, but one that satisfies the firm’s primarily domestic focus, says Richard Jacobi, vice president, vendor relationships, at the firm. After deciding an additional data source was required, Lava Trading embarked on an “exhaustive review of data providers” almost a year ago. The review included Reuters, Fidelity, Thomson Financial and Interactive Data, alongside Telekurs Financial.
Says Jacobi, “We decided Telekurs was a better fit, due to their extensive range of coverage, their strength in corporate actions, and the level of attention they were giving us.” The company is working with Interactive Data on a separate options project, although this is not yet live.
It is well known, however, that Telekurs’ Valor DataFeed (VDF) is a complex feed to interface to. As such, Lava Trading has opted to use the Gain software from Austrian risk management and data management firm AIM Software.
Jacobi says, “AIM Software is an interesting company. The software is very easy to use and flexible, and has given us a leg up.” The implementation took two weeks. Gain provides a modular data feed management platform which integrates over 15 core data provider feeds, and featuring batch file requests and return exit codes for escalation purposes. Once launched, the software synchronizes the VDF security master file with the incoming delta files. Options, equity and corporate actions data for North American securities are loaded daily into Lava Trading’s SQL software environment.
Jacobi also cites another internal project at Citigroup focused on global sector codes sourced from Telekurs, where the Gain software helped them turnaround the data in a much quicker timeframe than would have been possible by integrating directly to VDF.
As well as paying for the VDF usage, Lava Trading has purchased the Gain software, and will pay regular maintenance fees.
Lava Trading provides high-performance ASP-based trading solutions, built to handle high volumes. It provides consolidated access for order execution capabilities across the major liquidity sources in the U.S., including Nasdaq, listed exchanges, ECNs and ATSs.
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