IMD & IRD Awards 2023: Best market data provider (exchange)—CME Group

Overview

Derivatives marketplace CME Group enables its clients to trade futures, options, cash and over-the-counter (OTC) products, optimize portfolios and analyze data. Its CME Group Data Services division includes a broad range of market data products and services, including derived data solutions and benchmark administration services. It also has a long-standing partnership with Google Cloud Platform, with the two companies collaborating to provide market data through a multi-terabyte-per-second cloud environment, helping clients to eliminate the cost and burden of maintaining their own infrastructure.

The solution

CME Group Data Services’ market data offering includes over 40 years of historical data, more than 600 terabytes of overall data and connectivity to more than 1 billion daily market messages. Distributed through CME Group’s data platforms and those of over 300 third-party distributors, its market data covers cash, futures and options across interest rates, equities, agriculture, energy, metals, foreign exchange and cryptocurrencies.

Its Derived Data Services (DDS) team enables the consumption of market data through a flexible licensing program, allowing clients to develop a range of marketable products and services, such as certificates and warrants, curves and surfaces, contracts for difference and exchange-trade products.

Secret sauce

CME Group Data Services cites its continuous investment in innovation to meet the evolving needs of clients as key to its success. In recent years, it has helped a number of clients transition to the cloud, providing more flexibility in how they consume their data. It has also deployed standardized file formats like JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), which alleviates coding challenges for Fix protocols/messages and simplifies data transfers for cloud-based applications.

Recent enhancements

• Added over 10 years of CME historical market depth data to Google BigQuery
• Collaborated with Deutsche Börse to make historical market data for CBOT, CME, Comex and Nymex available on its cloud-based analytics platform, A7, on a T+1 basis
• Made the CME Group Volatility Indexes (CVOL) available in a real-time streaming format, to provide investors with the ability access up-to-the-minute risk signals in most major markets

Future objectives

• Expanding its derived data offering with the BrokerTec RV Curve, which creates a single market to trade US Treasury benchmark spreads
• Increasing the adoption of CME Term SOFR, its global benchmark for new US dollar lending as implied by transactions in derivatives markets. As of April 2023, it has $3.7 trillion in loans, with over 8,500 licenses and more than 2,400 individual firms from over 90 countries referencing the rate.

Why they won

CME Group follows up last year’s win in the best market data provider (exchange) category by winning it again, thanks to its broad range of market data products and services, including derived data solutions and benchmark administration services. Its recent enhancements to its various data offerings include the addition of 10 years of CME historical market depth data to the Google BigQuery data warehouse, an alliance with Deutsche Börse that makes its historical market data available on Deutsche Börse’s A7 cloud-based platform on a T+1 basis, and the real-time streaming availability of the CVOL index, all of which proved pivotal in delivering the win for the Chicago-based group.