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Sydney Futures Exchange Deploys Overseas Hubs
The Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) is expanding access to its electronic-trading platform overseas to provide greater liquidity and improve the markets efficiency. The SFE has opened up two new communications hubs in Hong Kong and in Tokyo. The hubs provide SFE member firms and their approved affiliates with a direct link into the SFE market via SYCOM (Sydney Computerized Market) electronic trading screens installed at the member sites and connected the hubs.
The establishment of more communications hubs is part of the SFEs plans to become operational around the world and around the clock and is a way for Australia to tap into greater liquidity, says a source close to the exchange. Whereas previously member firms would have to phone their offices in Sydney or the exchange, itself, to place trades, the firms can now directly access SFE products through a connection to the hubs.
The SFE has also been granted approval by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to establish terminals in the U.S. and plans to launch hubs in New York and Chicago by the end of the first quarter of 2000. The source says that via the U.S. hubs, the SFE will for the first time have access to the largest market for derivatives trading.