The Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Mr. Oscar Onyema, has revealed that capital market decisions are driven by real time data.
In his address of welcome at the Market Data Workshop held yesterday in Lagos, he said “When we talk about market data, we refer to the pre and post trade-related data for the financial instruments traded on the NSE. Our market data informs traders, investors, media and others in our market on the quotations, latest price, and historical trends for the equities, fixed-income, and ETF products that are traded on our platform. This information is not only used in real time to make instantaneous buy and sell decisions, but the historical market data is used to make price projections, as well as calculate market risk on investment portfolios.
Continuing, he said “For Exchanges, delivery of market data to users is resource heavy and requires specialized technologies designed to handle the collection, processing and dissemination of massive data streams,” noting that “At the NSE, this effort is underpinned by our ‘next generation’ trading engine, X-GEN, which was built in collaboration with Nasdaq in 2013”.
“It is therefore very pleasant that this workshop is coinciding with the 3rd anniversary of X-GEN.
X-GEN is not only built to trade a wide range of securities, it is extendable to multiple interfaces for the consumption of market data.
“Additionally, it is FIX protocol version 5 enabled, improving market transparency and providing wide market access. It is these systems that we rely on daily to deliver approximately2.5GB worth of data to our various domestic and global market data consumers. Excellence drives our services, thus we continually challenge ourselves to deliver our data faster and in more easily accessible formats to our clients.
Onyema added that upon of the challenging economic conditions we are experiencing in Nigeria, “the capital market still remains one of the main vehicles for economic development and wealth creation”.
“The NSE Premium Board has returned 11.3% YTD 17th October 2016. The level of private sector time deposits has declined by 14.4% to N3.8tn over the last one year (Sep ’15 to Aug ’16), while private sector savings deposits have increased by 19.0% to N3.5tn. The average interest rate on these savings and time deposits are 3.6% and 5.9% respectively. With an average inflation rate of 12.7% over the last year, the NSE Market Data Workshop, themed, “Understanding Market Data for Savvy Investing and Wealth Creation” could not be more apt.
Domestic investors, and indeed foreign portfolio investors, require an elevated level of insight in order to discern between great investments and lame investments, especially during a challenging down cycle. That is why this workshop is designed specifically to provide capital market participants with sufficient knowledge about exploiting NSE market data for smart investment decisions.
Key speakers at the workshop were drawn from the global financial services sector; representatives of Independent Software Providers (ISPs); Market Data Vendors (MDVs);and experts from the telecommunications sector.
In his remarks, Mr. Ade Bajomo, the Executive Director, Market Operations and Technology at the NSE, called on market makers to brace up to the challenge growing the market to the part of leading position in Africa, saying “Capital market growth and development can ease the recession in Nigeria today.
Key sponsors of the workshop Bloomberg, Infoware, Global Trybe Solutions, ARM, Samsung, Zanibal, Wapic Insurance and Ntel.