FTF News also features FinTech briefs from Vestmark, Options, Nasdaq Stockholm and Axioma.
FX Platform Launched in Phases
NEX, a financial technology company, reports that it has partnered with the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS), China’s interbank market trading platform and infrastructure provider, to launch CFETS FX2017, a new trading platform for the Chinese foreign exchange (FX) market.
CFETS launched the first phase of FX2017 with a “central limit order book (CLOB) platform for spot onshore Chinese renminbi (CNY) on 4 December, 2017.
An anonymous execution capability for the Chinese market, market participants will have access to a central pool of liquidity and a public reference point for spot CNY pricing,” NEX says, noting that “phase two of FX2017 [went live] on 5 February 2018, launching a next generation relationship-based platform for CNY trading of spot, forwards and swaps.”
“The launch of FX2017 is a major upgrade of our financial trading infrastructure,” Madam Zhang Yi, the CFETS president, says in the statement. “It effectively ensures the safe, stable and efficient operation of the inter-bank foreign exchange market, enforcing the pricing power of the domestic Chinese market and opening it up to the global foreign exchange market.”
Vestmark Opens Research Portal
Vestmark, a provider of wealth management software, reports the launch of a research portal to support the Vestmark Manager Marketplace (VMM).
The portal is designed to help advisors at sponsor firms assess more than 200 strategies offered by 85 asset managers currently delivering models through VMM, Vestmark says.
The VMM research portal “incorporates next-generation web design and enhanced functionality to help advisors efficiently search through an online database of third party managers,” per Vestmark. “Built to complement the sponsors’ existing research tools and subscriptions, the portal lets advisors filter by asset class and style, and obtain a … transparent view into manager and strategy details.”
Since the 2016 VMM launch, “85 managers and strategists have signed up to provide models to the platform,” Vestmark specifies, adding that among the sponsors are Capital One and Wilshire Associates, as well as independent investment advisory firms.
“We created VMM to improve the way advisors find investment strategies for their clients,” David Littleton, managing director of Vestmark Advisory Solutions, says in a statement.
Options Launches Managed Colocation At Nasdaq Stockholm
Options, a provider of market data and colocation services for trading firms, reports the availability of its managed colocation solution at Nasdaq Stockholm, the securities exchange for Nordic countries.
“The new service will enable colocated clients to avail of low latency connectivity to the exchange’s Nordic feeds directly at source at its Vasby data center,” Options says.
Nasdaq Nordic specifies that it owns and operates exchanges in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway. “All regions are served from its primary trading data center in Stockholm,” per Nasdaq Nordic, which adds that the “Options platform today offers colocation services at 20 key trading hubs across Europe, North America and Asia.”
Planned expansion will extend the Options colocation infrastructure to additional markets across four continents throughout 2018,” Options adds. “New venues will include Switzerland (Zurich), Italy (Milan), Spain (Madrid), South Africa (Johannesburg), and South Korea (Seoul),” the cloud-based provider adds.
Axioma Releases U.S. Small Cap Risk Model
Axioma, an enterprise risk management, portfolio management, and regulatory reporting solutions provider, added the US Small Cap Risk Model (AXUSSC4) to its Equity Factor Risk Model Suite to offer institutional investors “a granular view of the drivers of risk and return in the small cap segment of the market,” officials say.
“The US Small Cap model was built to help those managing small cap mandates better streamline their investment process and construct better portfolios, while also providing a more detailed and transparent view of their exposures,” says Alessandro Michelini, managing director, global head of portfolio solutions at Axioma, in a statement.
Officials say the AXUSSC4 matches the investment community’s demand for a more specific, optimized model dedicated to the small cap universe. Key features are:
- Enhanced factor definitions, including Market Sensitivity and Volatility Factors based on the small cap market, and a revised Liquidity factor;
- Dynamic criteria to identify stocks on NYSE and NASDAQ with sufficient size and market liquidity for a small cap investment strategy;
- And medium and short-term horizon fundamental and statistical models, enabling managers to model their risk over different time horizons and investment approaches.
AXUSSC4 was developed and piloted in close collaboration with a group of Axioma’s clients across firm types and investment strategies, officials add. The vendor also plans to release new versions of its single country and regional models.
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