Datafeeds special report

Click here to download the PDF
Feed Me, See More!
I remember it like yesterday: my first story about banks bypassing consolidated feed providers and deploying internal ticker plants to capture and process raw feeds of exchange data. It was May 2004, and the story assembled comments from Inside Market Data's New York conference, where a panel predicted more firms would consolidate their own feeds using technology from specialist ticker plant vendors.
Alas, many of those vendors-including CMS Webview, Infodyne and Wombat Financial Software-are now gone, swallowed up by larger vendors looking for an edge, or out of business after struggling to stay afloat in an increasingly competitive market. And as traditional data vendors realized the potential impact of being displaced by exchanges, they built or acquired low-latency technologies to keep pace with their clients' needs and to exploit opportunities to insert themselves into the low-latency data flow.
Back in 2004, data consolidators combated disintermediation by pointing out the value they added through normalization and data quality. Little did I realize that the seed planted by those first direct feed pioneers would become a Little Shop of Horrors of competition over microseconds, and battles to handle high-volume data microbursts and traffic peaks in the millions of messages per second.
Now, these processes can be performed in split seconds by feed handlers and switches, using hardware-accelerated processors initially deployed to handle rapidly-rising market data rates, but which can also be used to perform high-volume repetitive processes.
Certainly, consolidated feeds provide more visibility than direct feeds from single venues, even if not as fast. Ultimately, the value of consolidated feeds is less in the process of consolidation-which anyone can do, should their developers have nothing more important to do-and more in the sheer array of exchanges, over-the-counter sources and proprietary and third-party datasets they can combine and distribute by connecting once to the source, and making its content available to their entire client base, leveraging their economies of scale and pricing their services accordingly, rather than each client connecting to every source themselves. And the potential for a raft of new venues emerging in the form of swap execution facilities-which will trade traditionally low-frequency over-the-counter instruments on exchange-like platforms-could present a bigger connectivity burden for potential participants, and could grant consolidated feeds a new lease of life.
Only users who have a paid subscription or are part of a corporate subscription are able to print or copy content.
To access these options, along with all other subscription benefits, please contact info@waterstechnology.com or view our subscription options here: https://subscriptions.waterstechnology.com/subscribe
You are currently unable to print this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
You are currently unable to copy this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
As outlined in our terms and conditions, https://www.infopro-digital.com/terms-and-conditions/subscriptions/ (point 2.4), printing is limited to a single copy.
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. As outlined in our terms and conditions, https://www.infopro-digital.com/terms-and-conditions/subscriptions/ (clause 2.4), an Authorised User may only make one copy of the materials for their own personal use. You must also comply with the restrictions in clause 2.5.
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
More on Data Management
S&P Global details AI partnerships, LLM advancements
The data provider has partnered with Microsoft and Anthropic to use hyperscaler tech to boost its AI offerings.
The industry is not ready for what’s around the corner
Waters Wrap: As cloud usage and AI capabilities continue to evolve (and costs go up), Anthony believes the fintech industry may face a similar predicament to the one facing journalism today.
Overbond’s demise hints at cloud-cost complexities
The fixed-income analytics platform provider shuttered after failing to find new funding or a merger partner as costs for its serverless cloud infrastructure “ballooned.”
ViaNexus aims to bring data entitlement control to MCP, agentic AI
The startup believes that Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol marks a major step forward for agentic AI, but the market data industry has its own complexities that haven’t been addressed—yet.
IEX automates reporting and billing with DataBP
The exchange has enlisted DataBP to help put structure around its reporting and billing—and potentially how clients subscribe to its data.
Buy-side transformation requires data stabilization
The IMD Wrap: Insightful and actionable data tools require reliable and accurate underlying data. Max looks at some startling findings from recent reports that highlight the key data challenges that lie ahead.
The Model Context Protocol brings agents to life—along with risk
Waters Wrap: From chat to infrastructure modernization, Anthropic’s MCP offers a ‘bridge’ to agentic AI, but its early days may prove disillusioning.
Agentic AI comes to Bloomberg Terminal via Anthropic protocol
The data giant’s ubiquitous terminal has been slowly opening up for years, but its latest enhancement represents a forward leap in what CTO Shawn Edwards calls, “the way we should talk to the world.”