CBOT to distribute Jade data

The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) will start releasing futures data from the Joint Asian Derivatives Exchange (Jade) this week.

Jade is a joint project between the CBOT and the Singapore Exchange that began live trading on September 25. Steve Dickey, vice-president of market data products and information at the CBOT, said the exchange will initially distribute the data free of charge via its quote vendor network to encourage data vendors to distribute the data as widely as possible during the early stages of Jade’s development.

He added that Jade would start charging for the data at a point determined by the levels of trading activity.

Jade begins trading with just one contract – the TSR 20 Rubber contract, with monthly expiries – but Dickey said that there are plans to introduce more. As a result, he acknowledged: “There won’t be a lot of data. But since it is purely electronically traded, we will offer top of book and market depth. There is a market-maker, so there will be bids and offers, and hopefully some depth throughout the trading day.”

The data fields will include bid and offer, size, last trade and volume, while the market depth will show the 10 best bids and offers with the size of each.

The contract is traded on the CBOT’s e-trading host, which is run from Chicago, and is distributed to vendors via QVN, which is connected directly to the e-CBOT trading host. Fifteen quote vendors – around half of the vendors that connect directly to CBOT – will immediately begin providing the data to their clients. In most cases, this will automatically become available rather than clients having to request the data – the vendors will just have to notify clients that the data is available.

User firms will also be able to receive the data via a direct feed by completing a licence agreement that will be available on the exchange’s website.

Dickey said it would be hard for the CBOT to accurately gauge demand for the data while it is offered free of charge, but usage figures from vendors should provide an indication of the data’s viability as a fee-based product.