Morningstar Quotes Archive is offered through Morningstar Real-Time Data, a division of Morningstar, which has a global tick database spanning more than 75 markets in a synchronised, normalised form and includes nearly six years of full order book tick history for many of the major U.S. and European equity and derivatives exchanges. Through Morningstar Quotes Archive, clients now have the option of receiving large amounts of data in a quick and flexible way.

Gordon Bloor, chief executive officer of Morningstar Real-Time Data, said, "Many firms support streaming data feeds in order to extract and store a tick history database. With a streaming data feed comes the need to invest heavily in infrastructure and communications. We have been increasingly asked to undertake some of the heavy processing on behalf of our clients, and Morningstar Quotes Archive achieves this, saving clients time, money, and a great deal of effort."

With databases measuring close to 50 terabytes, efficient extraction and delivery of required data is vital. Morningstar Quotes Archive provides financial services clients, including leading hedge funds and sell-side firms, with the ability to request data by symbol, market, field, and date range, to ensure precise and efficient extraction of specific data series. Delivery formats are also flexible with data being delivered either "raw" including every tick, or "processed" with configurable formats such as intraday open, high, low, close, and volume "bars." Tick history can be delivered as a one-off extraction or on an ongoing basis with extracts being delivered either hourly or at the end of each trading day. Morningstar Quotes Archive ensures that clients only receive and pay for the market data that they require.

Morningstar Quotes Archive has a number of applications across the financial marketplace. Historical tick data is critical for back testing algorithmic trading strategies and for meaningful transactional cost analysis, but is also widely used for compliance, with regulations such as Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) and Regulation New Market Service (Reg NMS) requiring the maintenance of large volumes of history, to facilitate the reconstruction of the decision path of a transaction.