The CBOE Futures Exchange, LLC (CFE) and Trading Technologies International, Inc. (TT) today announced CFE will connect to TT's FIX Gateway, which is based on the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol.
In doing so, TT's X_TRADER customers will be able to trade CFE's products via TT's X_TRADER platform, which incorporates TT's patented MD TraderTM. The CFE expects to launch trading on the TT platform later in 2005. All X_TRADER users will have the option to trade CFE products, including futures on the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) and futures in the Russell 1000 and Russell 2000 Indexes.
"We are very pleased that the CFE has chosen to connect to X_TRADER through our FIX Gateway. CFE is a growing market with products that I expect will have strong appeal to our customer base of high-volume professional traders," said Harris Brumfield, TT's CEO.
Patrick Fay, CFE Managing Director, said, "In our first year, CFE introduced innovative products and built a solid liquidity base, and now heading into our second year, broadening the number of CFE market participants is crucial to our continued growth. The link between CFE and TT's X_TRADER platform is critical to reaching the largest segment of the futures trading community. TT's clients will now have access to trading our unique, proprietary products like futures on VIX, variance, and the CBOE China Index."
TT's FIX Gateway allows exchanges, investment banks and other organizations to link their trading infrastructures to TT's X_TRADER platform via the FIX protocol, an open-standard protocol that is widely used in the equities industry. TT is believed to be the only futures Independent Software Vendor (ISV) to offer a back-end market connectivity interface using the FIX protocol for the derivatives industry.
TT has already developed connections to several exchanges, including the Big Four futures exchanges. TT's trading gateways are among the fastest and most reliable in the industry, and TT will continue to support and evolve them.
The FIX Gateway represents TT's second FIX product offering. The company, which is a member of the FPL Global Derivatives Committee, launched a FIX Adapter in 2003. TT's FIX Adapter allows customers and third parties to use their own front-end or automated software to trade through TT's high-speed direct market gateways.