SIX Digital Exchange Receives FINMA Regulatory Approval

Swiss exchange operator’s new SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), billed as the world’s first regulated digital market infrastructure, has received formal approval from FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, to operate a stock exchange and a central securities depository for digital assets in Switzerland. The FINMA authorisation will allow SDX to go live with a fully regulated, integrated trading, settlement, and custody infrastructure for digital securities, based on distributed ledger technology. This regulatory approval is the latest milestone in SDX’s plans to create a global liquidity network for digital assets for banks, issuers, insurance firms, institutional investors and other global and financial players.

Overbond Launches AI-Driven Fixed Income Model for Rich-Cheap Analysis

Fixed-income solutions vendor Overbond has launched an AI-driven rich-cheap model to its suite of fixed income analytics, designed to provide buy-side fixed income desks with a quantitative method for extracting alpha, by screening for mispriced fixed income securities. Combining both static and dynamic analysis of multiple factors with AI, Overbond’s rich-cheap model utilises mean-reversion valuation, designed to pre-identify bonds as rich ‘sell’ and cheap ‘purchase’ candidates, based on proprietary Overbond valuation metrics and AI non-linear optimization. The rich-cheap model is offered as an add-on to Overbond’s COBI-Pricing LIVE, which covers fixed income prices, liquidity scores and trading recommendations.

Fluent Trade Strengthens NAB’s Global FX Trading Capabilities

National Australia Bank has expanded its use of Fluent Trade Technologies’ multi-asset trading platform, strengthening and broadening its end-to-end global FX trading capabilities to deliver an ultra-low latency trading platform to its customers worldwide. The project has helped the bank to extend its market access, improve response times and increase fill ratios significantly. Fluent Trade says this means the bank can now price a wider range of clients more accurately, while also connecting to more venues, and extending its range of trading services.

TP ICAP’s Parameta Launches FX Evaluated Pricing Solution

Parameta Solutions, interdealer broker TP ICAP’s data and analytics business unit, has launched a new evaluated pricing solution that aims to deliver transparent and observable prices for foreign exchange derivatives securities globally, using a proprietary data model to give frequent and transparent indications. The FX Evaluated Pricing (FEP) service, which provides coverage for G10 and emerging market currency pairs and includes FX Forward instruments as well as FX volatility surfaces, aims to enable price discovery, valuation of portfolios and the meeting of regulatory reporting requirements. The launch follows the launch of TP ICAP’s Bond Evaluated Pricing in June 2020.

TBC Capital Selects Sweden’s Bricknode to Power Investment Suite

Georgian investment bank TBC Capital has chosen Bricknode’s SaaS-based brokerage software to power its suite of investment capabilities. By providing scalable operational infrastructure that integrates with the customer journey and existing processes, and by using automation and flexible APIs, Bricknode will enable TBC Capital to expand its brokerage capabilities while reducing operational costs, according to the company.

TriOptima Connects to Tri-Parties Through Swift

Post-trade infrastructure and risk management specialist TriOptima has integrated its triResolve portfolio reconciliation and collateral management product with the four main tri-party agents; BNY Mellon, Clearstream, Euroclear and  J.P. Morgan, providing clients with direct connectivity via Swift for sending instructions as well as receiving status messages and end-of-day reports.

With phase five of the uncleared margin rules (UMR) coming into effect in September, firms in scope will need to ensure they have the right infrastructure in place to exchange initial margin (IM) efficiently. Using the company’s Swift automation will provide triResolve clients with direct connectivity without having to build and maintain their own integration to the tri-party agents.

MarketDesk, SAFRAS & Mercado, and CTDI Partner to Launch New Brazil Soybean Index

Market data solutions provider MarketDesk has forged a partnership with SAFRAS & Mercado, the South American agrispecialists owned by CMA Group, and index solutions provider CTD Indices, to launch a new Soybean index, which is intended to provide a more reliable and transparent national benchmark price for the global commodities futures markets.

Currently, the major South American Soybean futures contract (CME SAS) is based solely on the export price at the Brazilian port city of Santos, whereas the new SAFRAS CTDI Brazilian Soybean Index takes into account transaction prices from 37 different cities across Brazil, and adheres to the best practices of the IOSCO Statement of Compliance around financial benchmarks.

Under the tripartite agreement, SAFRAS & Mercado is providing the raw data, CTD is aggregating that data to calculate the indices, and MarketDesk is providing the technology that will enable the index to be fed into trading and data platforms around the world.

NovaSparks Launches FPGA-Based Market Data Aggregator

Low-latency trading appliance vendor NovaSparks has launched an entirely FPGA-based order book consolidator that aims to set a new benchmark for latency and determinism in high volume trading.

The consolidator, implemented as an additional FPGA layer on top of the existing 70 feed handlers already available in the company’s NovaTick appliance, can generate normalised order books or BBOs to be consumed by trading applications – either via PCIe or Ethernet, or by hardware trading applications through NovaLink – in under a microsecond, a speed never achieved before, according to the company. The FPGA-based consolidator is designed to relieve trading firms from developing and maintaining their own high-performance custom book or BBO aggregation solutions.

CME Updates FX Market Profile Tool With Additional Futures Markets and Cash Equivalents

CME Group has updated its FX Market Profile analytics tool to provide live and historical analysis for 18 FX futures markets and cash equivalents. The tool provides comparisons between CME Listed FX futures and products from EBS Market and EBS Direct, on a side-by-side basis.

Building on the 11 previously available, users can now analyse 18 FX futures markets, as well as 8 FX Link contracts, and the OTC Spot FX equivalents, choosing either daily, weekly, or monthly averages over a historic period of up to 6 months. Enhancements to the tool, which is available free of charge from the CME Group website, include historic data analysis, actual traded volumes in Listed FX, and also the inclusion of FX Link data.

Chronicle Software & Reactive Markets Partner to Provide Access to FX & Crypto Liquidity

High-performance trading technology vendors Chronicle Software and Reactive Markets have announced a partnership that will provide ultra-low latency access to multiple FX and digital assets liquidity pools via a single API. The partnership provides out-of-the-box integration between Chronicle FIX and Switchboard, Reactive’s institutional trading network, and will provide simplified access to additional pools of FX and cryptocurrency liquidity.

The Chronicle FIX low latency engine is used across multiple asset classes including equity, FX and cryptocurrencies. Switchboard gives liquidity takers free, instant access to fully disclosed pricing from a rapidly growing list of FX and cryptocurrency OTC liquidity providers. Liquidity providers using Chronicle FIX can now scale their distribution by pricing to any taker on the Switchboard network.