Knight-Ridder Tradecenter To Add Tick-By-Tick Tokyo Stock Exchange Data Next Year

Tradecenter, Knight-Ridder's high-end analytic service, plans two enhancements -- one in content and the other in function -- for early next year. In content, Tradecenter will join the elite circle of services offering Tokyo equities data on a trade-by-trade basis. Functionally, Tradecenter will implement a relational database that will permit users to devise customized selects and sorts.

Knight-Ridder's Tokyo Stock Exchange deal represents a breakthrough for a U.S. quote supplier. Currently only Quick, the TSE's semi- captive vendor, and Reuters, a minority shareholder in Quick, provide real-time tick-by-tick equities data from Tokyo. The number of U.S. screens enabled for real-time Tokyo information is thought to be less than 1,000.

The combination of this scarce data with Tradecenter's powerful analytic capabilities could prove potent in expanding the service's smallish base of about 450 customers. The deal also calls for data on the TSE yen bond and Topix index futures contracts to be provided via Knight-Ridder's Moneycenter service.

Tradecenter hopes to have the equities data up by mid-year. The TSE feed is already being delivered to Knight-Ridder's Leawood, KS, data center, says Donald Roll, Tradecenter executive vice president, and the futures data is already available on Moneycenter.

How many TSE issues will be covered is a marketing decision yet unmade, says Roll. "The entire feed is available. What subset we take to add to our database has really not been decided yet." If Tradecenter's experience with London can be any guide, their Tokyo coverage should be comprehensive. The full range of London alpha, beta, and gamma stocks is in the Tradecenter database.

On the software front, meanwhile, Tradecenter plans to unveil its Tradescreen capability during the first quarter. Designed by LA-based Integrated Analytics and implemented in Sybase, the real-time relational database manager, Tradescreen will allow creation of customized selects, sorts, and rankings from Tradecenter's equities database. Parameters available for SQL queries will include price, volume, relative strength index, and money flow.

The initial implementation of Tradescreen will be understated. Tradecenter doesn't plan to offer intraday capabilities, but will instead stick to daily, weekly, and monthly data. Only the equities portion of the database will be available, although fixed-income and currencies may become available later. "I will readily admit that Sybase is overkill for our initial implementation," says Roll.

Most significantly, though, Tradecenter doesn't plan to put SQL capabilities directly into the hands of its users. Clients who want a special select or sort on either an occasional or regular basis will have to call Tradecenter to set it up. "Based on availability we could probably fax him the results within an hour of his phone call if it's a one-time screen," says Roll. "If he wants to see it on a daily basis we'd probably set up his own set of files so he could see it on his Tradecenter terminal."

While modest at first, Tradescreen could become a revolutionary tool if (a) operated in real time and (b) users could get direct access. The capabilities of Sybase conjure up images of traders sitting at terminals making arcane queries of a real-time database as fast as they can think of them. But Tradecenter is being cautious. "We have lots of ideas but no set plan at the present time," says Roll. "We want to see what kind of response we get before we overbuild."