One of the fastest growing regions for electronic trading is Latin America where the Santiago Stock Exchange Chiles central market has forged cooperative relationships with other exchanges in the region, including BM&F Bovespa, and revamped its IT trading infrastructure. In a Q&A with Wall Street & Technology, Andres Araya Falcone, CIO of Bolsas de Comercio de Santiago (BCS), explains how these joint initiatives in Latin America are driving the Chilean market to modernize the exchanges electronic trading infrastructure and prepare for an expected surge in messaging rates from market data.
How is the Santiago exchange working with other Latin American markets?
By the end of 2010, the Santiago Stock Exchange had signed a linkage agreement with Brazils stock exchange, BM&F Bovespa, heralding the latest in a series of cooperative projects being run between Latin American bourses. The agreement, signed on December 13th, will enable connectivity between both exchanges for order routing and market data dissemination. It also includes separate initiatives for further development of the Santiago Stock Exchanges derivatives market, the establishment of joint initiatives related to settlement, clearing and central counterparty services, as well as access to the BM&F Bovespa/CME trading platform from Chile.
How will this agreement with BM&F Bovespa impact your technology needs for order routing and market data?
Market participants in both countries will be able to route orders for stocks, stock options and related derivatives listed on the others exchange. Both exchanges will also be able to receive and distribute each others market data. Clearing and settlement of orders will be done according to local market rules of listed instruments. These kinds of initiatives imply that the Santiago Stock Exchanges IT platform has to be prepared to manage more than 6 million orders per day.
Your exchange recently teamed up with the stock exchanges of Columbia and Peru to form the Integrated Latin American Market or MLA, which began operating in June. What are the goals of this initiative?
We have been working for the last 13 months on MLA to consolidate regional stock markets so they may become more attractive for local and foreign investors. MILA will attract more liquidity to the market because investors will have wider availability and a greater diversity of companies to invest in, in a bigger and more integrated market. Finally, listed companies will benefit even further from this integration through access to new and increased financial resources for their expansion.
I understand that Santiago Stock Exchange has adopted IBM Websphere Front Office as its feed handler to power its market data to investors worldwide? Why did you select IBM Websphere?
WebSphere Front Office (WFO) will be a very important technological component for the Santiago Stock Exchanges strategic integration plan with other markets, saving time and reducing project implementation risk. We found a lot of advantages in WebSphere Front Office. First of all, WFO supports over 100 data feeds, including U.S. and international data sources, with connectivity to exchanges, ECNs and consolidated data providers.
Second, the consolidated order book capability facilitates combining any number of order book feeds into a single consolidated view, with improved functionality to deliver information in a better way to our clients. Third, low data latency and high throughput on an integrated, high-performance, high-availability platform, with support for high-speed multicast and point-to-point message transport is one of the most important features of WFO and we are taking full advantage of all of them. Finally, full IBM local and international support, including services and consulting is a key part of the complete solution for the Santiago Stock Exchange.
We are implementing our technological platform over WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging network within which WFO is integrated. This will distribute market data feeds from MILA market (Integrated Latin American Market) and BM&FBovespa from Brazil as well.
How important is low latency trading to your marketplace?
In the Chilean market, low latency is becoming more and more important. Today, currently at least three brokerage houses are developing and using their own algorithmic trading strategies for the equities market in Chile. Additionally, we are currently observing algorithmic trading traffic from foreign brokers, especially from Brazil.
Algorithmic trading is sensitive to round trip latency. A broker who is nearer an execution venue than his peers will have an advantage because he will experience shorter network propagation delays. This has led to the practice of locating algorithmic trading servers in close proximity to execution venue servers. In practice this means that the Santiago Stock Exchange will need to check the following list: sufficient bandwidth to handle peak order and trade flows; support for the most popular versions of FIX; facilities for proximity hosting for algorithmic trading servers; conformance with widely adopted execution mechanisms and order types; monitoring and publishing quality of service parameters; order validation routines to prevent fat finger problems, among others.
Have regulations recently opened up Chiles market to foreign investment?
The first concept of DMA in Chile began with what we call “direct traders” (buy-side traders) facilitating these specially authorized institutional clients, to send direct orders to the market via a “broker sponsor”. Thus, pension and mutual funds, insurance companies and other institutions, using trading terminals provided by the Santiago Stock Exchange, can trade directly in our market. The next natural step was the incorporation of electronic networks to attract order flow from the U.S., Europe and neighboring countries in Latin America, especially Brazil.
What did BCS prepare its technology to accept order flow electronically?
In 2006, we built the first FIX interface using version 4.0 to connect to International Networks, to attract the order flow of our local equities market. After that, the Santiago Stock Exchange launched its initiative to modernize the equities electronic trading system and developed TELEPREGN HT, jointly with IBM, which went live in June 2010. This system is ready for algorithmic trading flow since it supports a throughput of over 3,000+ orders per second with sub-millisecond latency. In designing the system, we decided to use FIX 4.4 to enable easier connection via DMA with other exchanges, sell- and buy-side firms and market information vendors. This has greatly facilitated the connection to different networks, such as Bloomberg, Fidessa and SunGard, among others. For all these initiatives, FIX has been crucial in facilitating the integration with these listed networks. During 2011 we will announce new network agreements.
I understand that BCS expects the amount of market data being transmitted to go from 500,000 per month up to 6 million messages per day by 2012. Why do you expect your message rates to grow so rapidly? Is this from electronic trading?
Currently, referring to the equity market, 11 percent of order flow comes from DMA which represents an average of a 27 percent increase over the last 6 months, today 19% on average comes from Internet retail order flow and the rest comes from traditional OMS and trade workstations.
Source: Wallstreet & Technology by Ivy Schmerken (Ischmerken@techweb.com)
@ischmerken , 24.08.2011
Filed under: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Exchanges, FIX Connectivity, Latin America, Market Data, Peru, Trading Technology, BCS Bolsa de Comercio de Santiago, BM&FBOVESPA, Brazil, BVC Bolsa de Valores de Colombia, BVL Bolsa de Valores Lima, Chile, Colombia, DMA Direct Market Access, Exchanges, FIX, Latin America, MILA Mercado Integrado LatinoAmericano, Order Routing, Peru, Regulation, Trade Connectivity
