The New York Stock Exchange (Nyse) is gearing up to launch a low-cost real-time market data service for delivery over personal finance Web sites. The move follows earlier deals by Nasdaq OMX and Bats Trading to distribute market data to new media giants such as Google and Yahoo!.
The Nyse Euronext unit has asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for permission to launch the new product - called Nyse Realtime Reference Prices - which will allow media and Internet companies to buy real-time, last-sale market data and provide it free of charge to the public.
The exchange says it expects "several major information providers" will offer the data and plans to launch the new product by 1 July for a four month pilot. The companies that will deliver the service have not been disclosed.
Ronald Jordan, executive vice president, market data, Nyse, says the move increases the exchange's transparency for the benefit of investors and issuers.
"Our proposal provides for a fair and reasonable economic incentive to the exchange to produce this data," says Jordan.
Nyse says providers will be able to purchase the data for a flat monthly fee and will not have to count and report the number of users to the exchange, nor contract with each user.
In November 2006 a coalition of some of the Internet's largest financial news sites - including Google and Yahoo! - petitioned the SEC to review the fees that stock exchanges charge for market data. Earlier in the year some Internet companies - such as AOL - had stopped publishing live quotes after exchanges began charging $1 per month per viewer for electronic marketplace data.
In January 2007 the SEC agreed to review fee hikes for market data usage proposed by Nyse that would have allowed the exchange to charge $5 per month per user for stock quotes on the Arca ECN.
The Nyse move follows last week's news that Nasdaq OMX is launching a real-time market data service in the US that will be delivered by Google, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC and Xignite. The exchange said the new service - called Nasdaq Last Sale and launched by its US stock market - places free real-time stock quotes "in the hands of millions of individual investors".
Meanwhile, last month trading start-up Bats inked a deal to to provide its real-time US stock quotes free of charge to users of the Yahoo! Finance site.
Update
Nasdaq OMX is also launching a European version of its new real-time market data service, called European Last Sale.
The new service will deliver real-time intra-day trade data from the Nasdaq OMX system for OMX Nordic and Baltic exchange-listed securities. The service will also include real-time intra-day trade data from Nasdaq OMX's Pan-European market, which is expected to launch in September.
Randall Hopkins,VP, Nasdaq OMX, says European Last Sale "will increase market transparency for European investors by providing universal access to real-time stock data".
Nasdaq OMX says it will look to partner with Internet portals and other information providers to deliver the data, but the exchange has not named the companies that will distribute the new service.
The exchange will begin trialling European Last Sale in June, with the official launch of the service slated for July.