During the initiative to increase the speed and scale of its electronic trading platform, ICE implemented new matching engines for the trading of futures and cleared OTC contracts, re-architected its internal messaging systems, upgraded matching-engine servers, and tuned each component of the platform to maximize efficiency in execution and processing. ICE also improved its APIs to reduce customer bandwidth requirements, upgraded its network hardware, and re-engineered its network.
In addition, ICE deployed an industry-standard FIX API (Financial Information Exchange – Application Programming Interface) to complement its longstanding Java API. Approximately 20 firms, including statistical-arbitrage and algorithmic trading funds have, or are in the process of, completing connectivity of their customized trading applications to the newly issued FIX API.
To serve its global customer base, ICE opened telecommunications hubs in Chicago, London and Singapore in the past year. These telecommunication hubs are designed to facilitate access and reduce connectivity costs to ICE’s electronic trading platform.
As a result of the recent enhancements, ICE states that its platform is 600% faster than at the beginning of 2006, and handles more than ten times the message volume compared to last year.
In April 2005, ICE’s futures business segment, ICE Futures, completed its transition to electronic trading. Prior to the electronic transition, trading in the futures markets on the platform stood at 33,296 contracts per day. In May 2006, the figure was 338,792, representing a 577% increase in electronically traded futures volume.
