The Financial Information eXchange (FIX®) Protocol has revolutionised the trading environment, proving fundamental in facilitating many of the electronic trading trends that have emerged over the past decade.
FIX has become the language of the global financial markets used extensively by buy and sell-side firms, trading platforms and even regulators to communicate trade information. This non-proprietary, free and open standard is constantly being developed to support evolving business and regulatory needs, and is used by thousands of firms every day to complete millions of transactions.
FIX is the way the world trades and it is becoming an essential ingredient in minimising trade costs, maximising efficiencies and achieving increased transparency. FIX offers significant benefit to firms keen to explore new investment opportunities; it reduces the cost of market entry with participants able to quickly communicate both domestically and internationally, in addition to significantly reducing switching costs.
The FIX Protocol language is comprised of a series of messaging specifications used in trade communications. Originally developed to support equities trading in the pre-trade and trade environment, it is now experiencing rapid expansion into the post-trade space, supporting straight-through processing (STP) from indications of interest (IOI) to allocations and confirmations. Additionally, it is witnessing significant growth in the fixed income, foreign exchange and listed derivative markets.
The FIX messaging standard is owned, maintained and developed through the collaborative efforts of FIX Trading Community™ member firms, which include many of the world’s leading financial institutions. These firms work together to ensure that the standard continues to meet emerging trading requirements and to promote its increased adoption, which presents huge potential benefits across the financial community.
FIX® has become the way the world trades. Virtually every major stock exchange and investment bank uses FIX for electronic trading, alongside the world’s largest mutual funds, money managers and thousands of smaller investment firms. Leading futures exchanges offer FIX connections and major bond dealers either have or are implementing them. Identifying an exact number of users is impossible, as FIX is a free and open standard, but it is very clear that the world’s financial community now speaks FIX.
To provide an indication of how some firms use FIX, the following information has been provided. These details have been submitted voluntarily as a survey of different strategies for integrating FIX connectivity into production systems.
Market participants are invited to post information about their use of FIX on this page. To do so, please contact your firm’s FIX Trading Community™ website administrator to update your company’s profile.
Postings are the sole responsibility of the FIX adopter. As FIX Trading Community is independent and neutral, it does not endorse any FIX adopting firm.
