IMD & IRD Awards 2022: Best market data (exchange)—CME Group

OVERVIEW

As the world’s largest derivatives marketplace, CME Group focuses on enabling firms to manage cross-asset risk across futures, options, cash and over-the-counter (OTC) products. Through its CME Group Data Services division, it provides a broad range of market data products and services, accessible through all major platforms and over 300 third-party distributors. CME Group also serves as a benchmark administrator and has played a key role in advancing the global Libor transition to alternative rates such as CME Term Secured Overnight Financing Rates (SOFR).

THE SOLUTION

With more than 40 years of historical data, more than 600 terabytes of overall data and connectivity to over 1 billion daily market messages, the CME Group Data Services offering is one of the broadest on the market. It distributes real-time market data on cash, futures and options across interest rates, equities, agriculture, energy, metals, foreign exchange and cryptocurrency. Over the last year, it has launched its Query API service on DataMine, a self-service platform that delivers on-demand access to CME Group pricing datasets, with history dating back to January 2014.

Query API allows clients to search for, license and access the specific market data they need, eliminating the need for monthly or annual subscriptions. CME Group has invested heavily in its cloud offering. It was the first derivatives marketplace to provide real-time market data natively through Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Since 2019, CME Group and GCP have worked together to provide real-time access to market data through a multi-terabyte-per-second cloud environment. In doing so, it has helped clients eliminate the cost of maintaining infrastructure. For example, the annual cost to manage a co-location server is approximately $120,000, versus $12,000 on average for a GCP connection.

WHAT’S TO COME

CME Group will continue to target futures commission merchants and retail brokers with specialized data distribution programs designed to increase retail access to futures and options data. Specifically, it plans to expand the programs in parts of Asia-Pacific and Latin America. It will also continue to collaborate with external partners to advance product development and sales opportunities. In late 2021, it announced a 10-year partnership with Google Cloud that will provide clients with multiple benefits, including broader access to its markets, enhanced real-time data and analytics, plus the launch of new products and services with greater flexibility and scalability.

WHY THEY WON

Few organizations, if any, can match the sheer breadth and depth of the data offered by CME Group, especially when it comes to derivatives and commodities data. Not only does it offer an on-demand service through its DataMine platform that supports the evaluation of historic trade fills and the predictive quality of trading algorithms, but its cloud proposition is similarly mature, providing users with real-time access to market data through its cloud partner, Google Cloud.