Following its letter to petition Bloomberg to allow its symbology to be included in FOW TRADEdata’s service Xymbology, the Information Providers User Group (IPUG) indicates that a dialogue has begun between the two vendors to incorporate both the BUID and the new Bloomberg Global ID (BBGID), which is at the heart of its open symbology initiative, in the service. To this end, FOW TRADEdata is currently seeking further client support to continue down this road and IPUG’s letter is therefore just the beginning.
In its letter to Bloomberg, IPUG describes the Bloomberg Open Symbology (Bsym) initiative, which was launched in November last year, as “very welcome” but notes that the vendor must now follow through with its promise of being “open”.
The Bsym initiative essentially entails the royalty free distribution of Bsym identifiers, which the vendor says is open to all, and the gradual migration from the existing BUID identifier to the new BBGID global identifier. With the aim of proving this openness, Bloomberg signed an agreement in April this year with NYSE Euronext to include its Bsym codes on NYSE’s data feed products globally. NYSE Euronext is initially adding Bloomberg Bsym codes to its OpenBook product and will then move on to distribute Bsym along with its standard security identifiers for New York Stock Exchange-listed companies across all its data products.
IPUG is therefore looking for a similar agreement to be signed with derivatives market specialist FOW TRADEdata. Its Xymbology service carries a number of market and independent software vendors’ symbology at the traded series level, but it does not as yet carry Bloomberg’s.
The industry group highlights in its letter to Bloomberg the challenge a firm faces in “the complex task of managing a wide and diverse universe of identifiers within its trading operation and especially in the area of derivatives”. It therefore asks the vendor to make the lives of its constituents that much simpler by opening up its symbology to another route to market.
The lobbying is reflective of the general desire within the user community for lower costs and easier access to instrument identifiers that have until now been largely proprietary to individual data providers.
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