Day One

Introduction to real-time financial market data

Monday 22 October 2012

This course unit gives a framework for the understanding of the industry and the key role of market data within it. This one day course unit is designed to provide a broad overview and introduction to the market data business, its systems and vendors. It is orientated towards the FISD Financial Information Associate syllabus and as such can also be utilised as a revision course for this exam for those delegates with some basic industry experience.

9.00 Registration and coffee

9.15 Housekeeping and introductions

9.30 FISD and the financial information associate certification process

  • Introduction to FISD
  • Objectives of the certification process
  • Study materials
  • The examination process itself

9.45 The markets

  • Evolution of capital markets and securities trading
  • The role of financial markets today
  • The trade life cycle

10.15 Participants in the financial markets

  • Buy side
  • Sell side
  • Exchanges
  • Inter-dealer brokers (IDB's)
  • Lesser regulated trading venues

10.45 Market oversight and regulation

  • The roles and responsibilities of:
    - Governments
    - The Bank for International Settlement (BIS)
    - Central Banks
    - Regulators

11.15 Morning Break

11.30 The internal functions of financial market institutions

  • Front, middle and back office functions
    - Trading, research, portfolio management
    - Risk management, pricing
    - Settlement and clearing
    - Direct market access and auto execution

11.45 Summary of major asset classes

  • Equities
  • Fixed income
  • Short term money markets
  • The FX market
  • Commodities
  • Futures and options
    - Credit Derivatives
    - Structured Products

12.15 Market data job functions

  • Consumer firms
  • Vendor firms

12.30 Overview of products and vendors

  • Exchanges
  • Data aggregators
  • Software and technology suppliers
  • Market share bewteen major vendors

13.00 Lunch

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Afternoon: the data and technology

13.45 Market data sources

  • Contributed data
  • Exchange data
    - Regulated markets, reported data, data packages
    - Lesser regulated trading venues
  • Vendor generated data
    - Internal sources, added value data
  • Data over the internet
    - Financial data sources on the internet
    - Advantages and disadvantages of internet delivery

14.15 Types of market data

  • What do we mean by market data?
    - data representation and field structures
    - data packaging
  • Fundamental data
  • History and other time series data
  • Valuations data
  • Credit ratings data
  • Indices
  • News and commentary
  • Messaging
  • Other reference data
    - instrument and counterparty reference data
    - Identification of securities
    - Security description
    - Issuer and counterparty data
    - Corporation actions
    - Reference data storage

15.00 Afternoon break

15.15 Standards

  • The challenges of standards
    - ISO, SWIFT, FIX

15.30 Methods of delivery and display

  • Terminals and workstations
    - Using market data in excel
  • Datafeeds
  • Databases
  • Platforms

16.00 Vendors

  • Overview of:
    - Thomson reuters, Bloomberg
    - Interactive Data, Six Telekurs
    - Standard & Poors, Dow Jones
    - Factset, Markit
  • Exchanges and MTF's
    - NYSE, LSE, DBG
    - BATS, Chi-X
  • Regional niche players
  • Specialist players

16.25 Users and uses of market data

  • Human use of data
  • Local applications
  • Shared applications
  • Algorithmic-based applications

16.40 Commercial framework for distribution and use of market data

  • Example commercial frameworks
    - Bloomberg
    - Reuters Business Principles and the RGA
  • Unit of count
  • Datafeeds licensing
  • Contracts, compliance and audits
  • Data usage reporting and inventory management
  • DACS, DART
  • MDM, FITS, INFOmatch

17.00 Afternoon break 2

17.15 Industry issues and challenges

  • The US markets and RegNMS
  • The European Union and MiFID
  • The consolidation tape
  • Challenges in Asia
  • Origins and impacts of the credit crunch on the financial markets
    - The regulatory "fall out"
  • Flash crash
  • The debate on "unit of count"
  • Data ownership and reporting responsibilities
    - Derived data and redistribution
    - Data audits
    - Case studies

18.00 FISD/FIA sample exam questions

  • Test
  • Review

18.30 End of day one