Direct market access for exchange-traded derivatives

Abstract

Direct market access grew up out of the equities market in the late 1990s, in particular when the number of electronic marketplaces, or ECNs, for trading stocks greatly increased in the US, and spurred on again by the wider use of the FIX protocol for communicating indications of interest. Now that direct market access is fairly standard for stock trading, the same firms are looking to expand these operations to exchange-traded futures, made possible by the move to electronic trading by the derivatives exchanges.