Nasdaq OMX launches MiQ business intelligence

Saidec: aggregating data can provide insights

Nasdaq OMX has launched a new business intelligence service called MiQ, which it says will help its regional exchange, clearing house and CSD customers to better understand liquidity, market movements, performance and business opportunities.

“When you aggregate together many different kinds of data, things start to get interesting,” said Eva Saidac, head of data product management of market technology at Nasdaq OMX.

“You can visualise the data and better understand all kinds of things, including how flows move between equities and fixed income, for example, or how open interest in the derivatives markets is changing. It’s very good for customer support. It’s a big opportunity for the exchanges.”

MiQ is a centralised data management tool. It is built around a series of dashboards, which can be set up to help users keep track of different measures, such as liquidity or market share, and the factors that influence them.

The idea is to help financial institutions to better visualise their data and gain insight into changes in real time. Nasdaq’s NLX derivatives trading venue in London is already using MiQ, but it is intended as a global platform, aimed at exchanges, clearing houses, central securities depositories. Other areas that it covers include billing data, clearing activity and IPOs.

Nasdaq OMX has stated that many of the same customers for its trading engine may be offered MiQ. Those customers consist of regional exchanges around the world, especially in the Middle East, where Nasdaq OMX has sold its platform to the exchanges of Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey within the last 18 months. These customers would be able to either use the data internally or provide it externally to their customers, the exchange members. Nasdaq OMX is also exploring the possibilities for MiQ on its Nordic market.

“The launch of MiQ will significantly improve how market operators effectively and strategically manage and analyse their data,” said Lars Ottersgård, senior vice president, market technology at Nasdaq OMX. “Enabling organisations to be more informed through better data intelligence taken across the entire trade life cycle will help drive liquidity and market share, grow revenues, enhance client services and stay ahead of competition.”

Exchanges have increasingly sought to diversify their revenue streams in recent years as incomes from traditional trading fees have declined. Market data has been central for many, accounting for a significant portion of overall turnover. Although some of the individual national exchanges in Europe have been criticised for charging too much for market data, no consensus has yet been reached on how much market participants should pay.

In Germany, derivatives exchange Eurex has just expanded its market data service by adding real time analytics for futures contracts. The analytical abilities were added for the most liquid futures contracts on the exchange. This includes 25 order and trade-related analytics that cover the DAX and EURO STOXX 50 Index Futures, VSTOXX Futures and benchmark interest rate derivatives. The tool allows users to see data such as the quanitity of arrived orders over the last 30 seconds per instrument, as well as volume weighted average price of buy and sell-triggered trades and volatility of buy and sell order quantities over the previous 300 seconds.