Nasdaq’s Hong Kong data centre tie-up to give middle class Chinese investors real-time edge
From July, Nasdaq will provide its Asia-Pacific customers direct access to its market data via three data centres in Hong Kong
Nasdaq has tied up with three data centres in Hong Kong to offer investors in the region quicker, easier and less expensive access to data from US financial markets, with an eye on China’s growing pool of middle class investors who are seeking overseas investment opportunities and asset diversification.
Starting from July, Nasdaq will offer direct access to its US markets data via POP (Point of Presence) services through data centres owned by Equinix, iAdvantage and Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing.
The POP service allows Nasdaq customers to directly connect to any of its market systems through these specific data centres. Nasdaq data is currently available via its primary data centre in Carteret, New Jersey, and Equinix’s LD4 data centre in Slough, UK.
Through the POP services, Asia-Pacific customers – brokers and data vendors – can then provide real-time US equity and index data on their platforms to individual investors via trading applications and financial web portals.
“This [new POP service through Hong Kong data centres] means real-time data can be accessed directly from the source [Nasdaq], instead of through other vendors,” said Tomas Franczyk, Hong Kong-based managing director for Asia-Pacific at Nasdaq Global Information Services, in an interview with South China Morning Post.
“Our corporate clients in the region no longer need to build or pay for the infrastructure or bandwidth needed to ship data from the US. It will be faster and more cost effective.”
The new initiative is “heavily driven” by the growing demand from investors in the region, notably from China, he added.
“Chinese investors are getting increasingly sophisticated. They want to diversify their assets and invest in Chinese ADRs and US companies listed on the US exchanges.
“They want the same access to the financial market data that their US and European peers can get.”
“We’ve noticed a huge demand from Chinese corporate clients, including fintech firms and media companies, who want to offer individual investors data feed services that include US equities, options, futures, and commodity products.”
In March, Sina Corp, one of China’s largest web portals that operates Sina.com and social media service Weibo, signed an agreement with Nasdaq to get real-time data for all securities traded in the US market, so that it could then offer these services across its internet and social media platforms.
The new Nasdaq POP services via Hong Kong data centres will make available quotes and trade data for US-listed equities via Nasdaq Basic and Nasdaq Last Sale, as well as data on exchange-traded funds and share indices via Nasdaq Global Index Data Service.
Nasdaq Basic provides real-time best bid and offer, as well as last sale information for all US exchange-listed stocks. Nasdaq Last Sale offers the last traded prices for US stocks.
A number of Asian brokers and data vendors have signed up for the Nasdaq Basic and Nasdaq Last Sale data, including JD Finance, Shanghai Qianlong Network Technology, Beijing Haole Technology, Jimustock Securities, and Maybank Kim Eng Securities.
