Nasdaq OMX Enhances UltraFeed

Nasdaq OMX Group said it has injected U.S. equity market depth data Nasdaq, NYSE Euronext, Direct Edge and BATS exchanges into UltraFeed, according to today’s announcement.

Included in UltraFeed’s equity depth data is Nasdaq TotalView, a product that displays The Nasdaq Stock Market’s full order book.

UltraFeed is now combining the equity depth data from multiple exchanges into a single feed.

The move will provide customers with more transparency into quote information and quote levels and make decisions on what they see. However, the enhanced feed is not necessarily aimed at high frequency trading firms, but they could and may take advantage of it for their models, said a spokesman for NasdaqOMX

“With the addition of full order depth from the major U.S. equity exchanges, UltraFeed has expanded its demographic to include more sophisticated investors who, along with traders and other market data consumers, require a higher level of transparency into the U.S. equities markets,” said Brian Hyndman, SVP, NASDAQ OMX Global Data Products. “Adding equity depth data empowers UltraFeed customers to deploy different strategies and gives them access to the specific data they need in an easy-to-use format."

In terms of pricing, Nasdaq OMX did not specify what it charges for the enhanced feed. “UltraFeed is a customizable redistributor data feed offering, so the pricing will be based on the data content and delivery needs of the client,” the exchange said.

Among the key benefit are that customers can save on development costs by processing a single data feed, rather than disparate data feeds from multiple exchanges. UltraFeed is a product that aggregates all North American equity, options, futures and mutual funds, index and bond data in a normalized message format.

Firms can also save on network costs because the normalized messages are more bandwidth efficient, due to the use of binary formats and locate codes, than most direct exchange data feeds. They also can save on access fees for NASDAQ, UTP, CTA and other exchanges by taking the data via a normalized data product. Also, they receive a low-cost solution as Ultrafeed is an extremely price competitive product.

UltraFeed runs on Nasdaq OMX’s INET technology, which gives firms the ability to manage their own ticker plant to ensure faster processing time and increased reliability and flexibility, according to the release.

Customers can receive the data via an extranet provider or direct connection in multiple datacenter locations. Colocation is not mandatory, but could be involved. The number of messages per second varies depending on the content set chosen by the customer.

Future plans to enhance UltraFeed include a “smart” offering from the Option Price Reporting Authority (OPRA), which will allow customers to significantly reduce bandwidth by only offering National Best Bid Offer (NBBO) data. Nasdaq OMX is also planning to launch a “Synthetic NBBO” feed taking the top of book equity data from each U.S. equity venue.

Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio