TradingTech Insight Brief
agora and Montis Partner to Develop End-to-End Platform for Digital Securities
agora Digital Capital Markets and Montis Group have announced a strategic partnership to develop an end-to-end platform for conventional and digital securities in regulated fixed income markets. The agoraPlatform will interoperate with Montis’s distributed ledger technology-based Central Security Depository (CSD), with authorisation and operational Go-Live targeted for Q4, 2023.
The collaboration aims to streamline interactions from originating, issuing, recording, holding, through to settling conventional, non-native, and natively digital securities tokens. By integrating agora’s pre-trade workflow tool with Montis’s post-trade digital infrastructure, the partnership marks a significant step towards creating a comprehensive environment for both conventional and digital securities.
Exegy Adds Deribit to Metro Trading Platform, Expands Crypto Options Trading Capabilities
Exegy, the front-office trading solutions provider, has added Deribit, the world’s largest cryptocurrency options exchange, to its list of covered crypto derivatives markets for its Metro professional trading platform. This integration will enable crypto traders on Deribit to leverage Metro’s pricing, execution, and risk management capabilities. The inclusion of Deribit follows demand from current and potential Metro users and aligns with Exegy’s broader ambition of introducing professional options trading functions to crypto options markets.
The Metro platform now has trading capacities for three crypto derivative-listing exchanges, Deribit, CME, and Ledger X. It equips professional traders with tools for dynamic volatility surface modelling, execution, and robust risk analysis.
Beeks and IPC Systems Deploy Advanced Private Cloud Solution for Johannesburg Stock Exchange
Beeks Group, providers of managed cloud computing, and electronic trading solutions vendor IPC Systems, have announced the implementation of a managed infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution for the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). The collaboration will provide a private and hybrid computing infrastructure offering, accessible globally at prime colocation facilities. This end-to-end solution combines market data and trade lifecycle services with a robust trading infrastructure in key global markets, enabling client deployments within JSE’s own data centres.
The new service empowers JSE, Africa’s largest stock exchange, to directly address clients’ challenges around monitoring, hosting, maintenance, and time to market. Leveraging the advantages of a managed service provider and the infrastructure-as-a-service model, JSE is now positioned to offer enhanced capabilities and further options to its client base.
TNS Enhances European Backbone to Support Increased Market Data Volumes
Transaction Network Services (TNS) has upgraded its European backbone, increasing capacity to manage growing market data volumes from numerous exchanges throughout Europe. The network has been reengineered to ensure maximum uptime, resilience, data delivery, and to offer the lowest commercially available latency between significant European financial centres, such as London, Frankfurt, and Bergamo. Both primary and secondary network paths have been enhanced to maintain complete end-to-end diversity of A and B market data feeds.
Over the last five years, TNS has established an ultra-low latency trading network throughout Europe, designed for buy-side and sell-side firms, prop shops and vendors. The network connects to 60 global exchanges and is monitored around the clock by TNS’ global network operations centres.
LTX Introduces BondGPT, an AI-Driven Application Streamlining Corporate Bond Selection
LTX, a subsidiary of Broadridge Financial Solutions, has launched BondGPT, an application driven by OpenAI GPT-4. The AI-powered tool will respond to bond-related queries and assist users in identifying corporate bonds on the LTX platform, integrating real-time liquidity information from the LTX Liquidity Cloud. This advancement aims to streamline workflows and enhance efficiency for asset managers, hedge funds and dealers involved in bond selection and portfolio construction.
The BondGPT application offers a large language model (LLM) chat feature, allowing users to ask questions and locate corporate bonds based on their criteria. It utilises LTX’s Liquidity Cloud and bond similarity technology to identify bonds with similar characteristics, fulfilling traders’ real-time liquidity requirements.
C. Hoare & Co. Deploys Integral to Enhance FX Services
C. Hoare & Co., the UK’s oldest privately-owned bank, has deployed cloud-based SaaS FX technology from Integral, the currency technology provider, to offer competitive FX rates and market liquidity access to its business and personal account customers.
By providing the bank with liquidity aggregation, an FX pricing engine and API distribution to customers, Integral is helping C. Hoare & Co. to improve service to its current customers and reach new market segments, while avoiding the significant costs associated with building its own infrastructure.
OSTTRA Launches New Service for Cross-Currency Swap Conversions
OSTTRA, the global post-trade solutions provider, has successfully carried out the first cross-currency swap conversions of USD/SGD swaps from SOR to SORA. This development is a part of OSTTRA’s ongoing efforts since 2021 to assist market participants in transitioning from legacy Libor benchmarks to new risk-free rates (RFRs). The conversion process generates overlay transactions, which are submitted for clearing to minimise risk and present value (PV) impact.
The first multilateral conversion involved eleven market participants, while a second run involved twenty-one participants. OSTTRA now plans to expand the service to cover other indices subject to cessation, such as MXN, PLN, ZAR and CAD. The new service is facilitated by OSTTRA’s triReduce and triBalance, with CCP connectivity provided via OSTTRA MarkitWire.
Cboe Europe Indices Now Included in BMLL Data Suite
Level 3 data and analytics provider BMLL has announced the integration of Cboe Europe Indices into its product suite, enhancing its existing Cboe historical data coverage for Europe, US, and Japan. This strategic move furthers BMLL’s commitment to expanding its data coverage for the benefit of global market participants.
BMLL’s clients, ranging from banks and asset managers to academic institutions and regulators, will now be able to utilise the company’s trading analytics for detailed analysis of both Cboe Europe’s indices and their constituents, accessible via multiple BMLL platforms, including BMLL Data Lab, BMLL Data Feed, and BMLL Vantage.
BNY Mellon Launches AI-Focused Digital R&D Hub in Dublin
BNY Mellon has announced the creation of a new Digital R&D Hub in Dublin, with an initial investment of €8 million. The hub will spearhead innovation in AI, machine learning, and data analytics. By the end of 2025, it’s expected to more than double the bank’s digital team in Dublin, creating 30 specialist jobs.
BNY Mellon’s recent increase in patent applications and successful AI initiatives such as its Predictive Analytics for Trade Settlement underline the bank’s commitment to technological innovation. Furthermore, the hub aims to boost local STEM talent development through collaborations with educational bodies and new recruitment efforts.
Eurex Launches First European Bitcoin Index Futures Contract for US Investors
The US Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved the trading of Eurex FTSE Bitcoin Index Futures for US-based investors, beginning 29 May 2023. This milestone marks Eurex’s efforts to provide secure and regulated access to cryptocurrencies, making it the first exchange in Europe to offer Bitcoin index futures. Trading began outside the US on 17 April 2023, and the contract was developed with FTSE Russell and Digital Asset Research.
The futures contracts trade in EUR and USD and are equivalent to one Bitcoin, with cash settlement upon expiry. Since the launch, over ten members have traded hundreds of contracts, with further participants preparing to join.