OREANDA-NEWS. August 23, 2012. Moscow Exchange Group and EPAM Systems (NYSE: EPAM) have jointly finalized FIX/FAST solutions launched year ago on the Exchange.  The updated services have been designed to provide Exchange's clients with market data and be used in electronic trading on the securities and FX markets. The main feature of the services is their tolerance to the number of clients served.

Summarizing the first year of the tools' operation Grigory Baytsur, Head of FIX/FAST Project at Moscow Exchange, said: "The FIX/FAST tools have been in high demand among our clients. In fact, they represent standard and most rapid sources of market data of the Moscow Exchange's trading and clearing system. Their quality and reliability remain high notwithstanding the number of companies employing them and running client applications. Such reliability of services is becoming one of the key priorities for all the top trading venues".

At the moment nearly half of the securities market orders are submitted using the FIX protocol while share of trades executed using the service reaches 20% of the main trading mode's trading volume.  The FAST UDP Multicast Marketdata tool has proved to be the most efficient market data source, i.e. about half of orders on the FX and securities markets are announced based on information provided by this service. Trading members are moving gradually to such off-the-shelf solutions.

Olga Krusanova, OTKRITIE Group:

"OTKRITIE Group was one of the first companies that started to use the FIX/FAST tools actively. Being a worldwide standard the FIX/FAST protocol simplifies and optimizes connection to the markets thereby broadening trading opportunities. This aspect is especially important for those who have already traded on global stock markets. During this year Moscow Exchange's team has actively optimized the FIX/FAST solutions that allowed increasing velocity of transactions processing and improving the services' quality".

The introduction of developments and improvements in the tools have resulted in a 30% latency reduction for orders submitted in the trading system and a threefold latency reduction for requests to cancel orders. Period for indirect orders and trades to appear in the order book has been reduced from 800 to 500 microseconds and FAST UDP Multicast additional functions prepared already for introduction will allow the reduction to 200 microseconds.

Artak Oganesyan, Deputy Director for Business Development at EPAM Systems:

"Each IT project of Moscow Exchange aims at improving quality of its services, enhancing reliability and availability of its infrastructure.  We are delighted to contribute to this process that becomes more important as technological tools are being combined".  

Usability of the FIX/FAST tools has been improved due to transferring servers used for the tools' support to the public address space.  Such improvement facilitates much more simple connection of clients via global networks for financial information exchange. In addition, the FIX/FAST tools are backed with failover clusters with opportunity for a hot (FIX) and warm (FAST) backup. 

It is expected that main parameters of interaction with the Exchange's trading system via the FIX/FAST protocol will be improved by more than 20% after the infrastructure of the ASTS trading and clearing system's core is transferred to the 10 Gbit network.

Within the framework of a load testing scheduled for September 8, 2012 all trading members will be able to test in production their systems functioning based on the FIX/FAST protocol.