TOCOM Establishes Market Data Access Points In Chicago Via CQG’s Continuum

The Tokyo Commodity Exchange, Inc., (TOCOM), Japan’s largest commodity futures exchange and one of the most prominent in Asia, announced on 4 November that it will provide its market data through futures order execution and analytics provider CQG, Inc.’s Continuum enterprise API division at two Illinois locations. CQG already brings TOCOM data to its customers, and now a customer can connect to TOCOM in the US via Continuum’s Quotes Direct product.

By leveraging Continuum’s industry-leading market data processing technology, TOCOM will provide traders, especially those also trading CME Group’s products, with its market data in ready-to-use format. Traders can connect to TOCOM at 350 E. Cermak in Chicago and at the CME Group’s data center in Aurora, Illinois. This service will allow them to pull TOCOM market data, in the same format as CME provides its own data, to power their trading systems and terminals via the Quotes Direct API.

Tadashi Ezaki, President and CEO of TOCOM, commented: “I am very pleased to be able to offer this service, with the strong support from CQG and their highly professional team. This new service will make TOCOM’s market data easily accessible by market participants in Chicago.”

“TOCOM was looking for a way to make their data available outside of Tokyo, specifically, to create a connection point in Chicago and our responsive API solution was the ideal fit for their needs,” said Mike Glista, Vice President of Continuum. “This new connection allows a customer trading CME to also trade TOCOM without the need to connect in two separate places.”

Trading from overseas, in terms of market share, at TOCOM has been increasing in the last five years since its introduction of the current trading system provided by Nasdaq OMX. Since 2013, foreign participations have been accounted for around 40% of TOCOM’s overall volume and hit record high at 44% in September 2014. The increase was mainly from brokers in Hong Kong and Singapore as well as the United States. Together with the recently introduced Global Network Service (ultra-low-latency connectivity between Chicago and Tokyo), TOCOM aims to capture traders trading in cross-market arbitrage strategies, especially in primary contracts such as gold, platinum, as well as oil.