The Nasdaq OMX Group (Nasdaq:NDAQ) announces the launch of its proximity services which provide high-speed connectivity in the Nasdaq OMX data centre in the city of London.
Proximity services, often known as "co-location," enables participants to locate their trading engines on-site with the NASDAQ OMX pan-European market in order to enhance trading speed. NASDAQ's pan European market, now known as NASDAQ OMX Europe, will begin offering these services immediately.
This announcement follows NASDAQ OMX Europe's announcement earlier this month that it has begun customer testing.
"Our proximity services allow customers to physically place their trading systems next to our matching engine, which removes any latency associated with external networks," commented Chris Concannon, Executive Vice President, Transaction Services, NASDAQ OMX. "We are looking to provide our customers with a range of choices in how they connect to our market. This product is another connectivity option designed to meet the needs of high performance traders."
NASDAQ OMX Europe will enable best execution in high volume securities trading in a cross-border, multimarket environment. The market, which will be the first platform to connect European liquidity pools with Pan-European routing, is scheduled to open in September 2008. At launch it will trade approximately 300 of the most actively traded European blue chip shares. The NASDAQ OMX trading platform is recognized as the fastest in the industry with peak trading speeds of 250 microseconds. The launch of NASDAQ OMX Europe is subject to FSA approval.