Since the launch of the London Metal Exchange proximity hosting solutions in December 2011, FFastFill has seen substantial round trip performance times from its hosting locations to the exchange. Average acknowledgment times for new orders are improved by 50% for those members locating their exchange gateways in FFastFill’s two new datacentre suites one of which is provided by Interxion. FFastFill provides LME member and customer order routing for over 20 LME category 1 and 2 members.
FFastFill has seen the average exchange round trip latency reduce from 10ms to 5ms when the proximity solutions are used, although not all members use these proximity solutions.
Proximity hosting offers premier access to FFastFill’s LME trading services. The main beneficiaries of which are those traders or systems active in FFastFill’s bespoke LME synthetic orders, such as random icebergs and ghost orders and for users of FFastFill’s award winning spreading tool SpreadIntelligence which offers a host of inter- and intra-market spread trading features.
FFastFill will also be offering the use of both the Interxion and Equinix sites to non-LME customers as both additional communications hubs and proximity hosting venues for other exchanges. FFastFill currently provides access to over sixty global venues via the Horizon global multi-broker network.
Caroline Davis, Managing Director – Business Development, FFastFill said “The improvement in round trip times will bring significant performance improvements to screen and algorithmic traders, both of whom are active on FFastFill Horizon, the global multi-broker network. Proximity to the matching engine is vital in order to ensure the trader receives the best fill possible for himself or his client”.
Michael Warren, LME CTO, said “We are delighted that our decision to upgrade our trading platform, LMESelect, and to simultaneously add the proximity sites to the environment is showing such clear benefits to our members and business partners such as FFastFill. We will continue to enhance our technology to ensure a stable and performant trading environment for market participants.”
Greg McCullough, Managing Director Interxion UK, added: “By colocating at Interxion’s data centre, centrally located in the City of London, LME members and their customers can now benefit from this significant reduction in latency to the LME. In addition, colocating at our London data centre not only gives access to an extensive financial ecosystem of leading industry vendors, such as FFastFill, but also to all financial networks, allowing market participants to connect to all London-based exchanges and MTF’s in less than half a millisecond round trip.