SGX plans world’s fastest securities trading engine

The Singapore Exchange on Thursday announced an S$250m plan to build the world’s fastest securities trading engine.

Magnus Böcker, SGX chief executive, said the exchange’s Reach project would aim to deliver the world’s lowest trading latency through new data hubs in London, New York and Tokyo, and co-location facilities in Singapore.

The plan is intended to buttress SGX’s strategy of attracting listings from other Asian countries by encouraging global trading in Singapore listed stocks, which should increase the attractiveness of the exchange to new issuers.

Gan Seow Ann, head of markets, said more than 40 per cent of broking members had already signed up to the new system, which will be rolled out from the first quarter of next year.

The exchange said the new trading environment would be ideal for global investors, including sophisticated traders and participants new to the region, and would bring better liquidity and greater velocity to the market.

The new trading engine - SGX Reach – will be delivered through Nasdaq OMX’s Genium INET platform, Voltaire’s InfiniBand solution and HP technology. The exchange said a test conducted in may established an average order response time of 90 micro-seconds “door-to door”.

“This will provide customers with the fastest execution capability currently in the world,” the exchange said.

A new SGX data centre, in a purpose-built state-of-the-art facility, will house SGX’s trading, market data and clearing infrastructure and offer a wide range of co-location facilities, introducing ultra-low latency trading and market data.

“These SGX hubs will radically lower crossborder connectivity costs to SGX and facilitate participation in Asia’s growing markets by a larger number of global trading firms,” the exchange said.