DGCX Targets Apps for Data, Trading

“People are moving away from the traditional laptops to mobile devices. We launched this product late May, early June, and within this one month we can see that now we are getting 30 to 35 percent of users coming from a handheld device,” says Basab Banerjee, chief technology officer at DGCX. “We can say the future is with the handheld or mobile devices. We are focusing more and more on that, and on information being more easily available and [ensuring that clients] should get the right information at the right time and quickly.”

The MarketWatch microsite, which the exchange rolled out in late May but launched officially in early June as part of a wider initiative to enrich the exchange’s market data offering (IMD, June 8), contains price and trade data on DGCX, market depth, and charts.

Banerjee says the site’s standout feature is that it was built in HTML5, making it “lightweight, easy to navigate and compatible with mobile platforms,” adding that the exchange will make MarketWatch available on most mobile browsers shortly.

As well as mobility, Banerjee says the exchange hopes that MarketWatch will also enhance visibility of its market data among DGCX members and their clients A connection to MarketWatch could even help members reach more clients, Banerjee says, as it enables traders to start trading without a dedicated connection to a more expensive market data feed or platform.

“We want to make sure we reach the right people, the right customers, the right audience, and especially enhance their world market visibility and reach the right communities,” he says.  “We have many members who do not have access to their own desktop or dissemination website [for data]. With this website, they just need to connect to the internet and get data in near-real time.”

Banerjee says he believes there is a large and growing audience for plug-in-and-trade websites, and the exchange is now looking at rolling out sub-products in the form of equity, asset and futures products on the platform. “We are looking at different audiences within the sectors. This could be an instrument or an index tool to reach further into the market and go to the right people.”