Separate developments – with BrokerTec in the U.S. and with MTS in Europe – are pointing to the move by fixed income markets into the low-latency trading space. These developments follow on from the increasing adoption of low-latency technologies in the foreign exchange markets, as latencies are pushed lower for all asset classes.
ICAP-owned BrokerTec is upgrading its core technology by deploying Nasdaq OMX’s Genium Inet matching platform. That is pushing latency down from 10 milliseconds to less than 200 microseconds.
Brokertec head Dan Cleaves says: “We’re very pleased to have successfully launched the new BrokerTec platform in the U.S. All BrokerTec customers, including both manual and API traders, will now benefit from substantially increased performance and greatly enhanced user experience.”
Separately in Europe, MTS – a leading fixed income trading hub with more than 500 counter parties – has added Fixnetix as a Network Service Provider. NSP status allows Fixnetix to provide market data from MTS to all and to offer trading connectivity to the existing inter-dealer client base of MTS, joining the 80+ markets already hooked in.
According to Fixnetix CEO Hugh Hughes: “It is clear that automated trading solutions for the fixed income arena are in increasing demand as participants look to leverage the technology expertise gained in equities, derivatives and FX. The fixed income markets are also more receptive to receiving electronic flow and participants will naturally look to take advantage of new lower latency un-netted feeds and greater exchange throughput.”
