The African continent’s largest stock exchange, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) continues to enhance electronic trading offerings to both local and international investors.

Technology and enhanced liquidity are key drivers in JSE’s technology modernization journey.  The JSE has collaborated with Rapid Addition, a global leader in electronic trading and connectivity solutions, to introduce JSE-FIX, a new order routing service. Using FIX Community messaging standards, JSE-FIX allows global investors to seamlessly access Africa’s largest stock exchange.

Traders are now able to add South Africa equities to their portfolio with minimal changes to their existing systems and execution management processes. Asset class agnostic, the tie-up will also enable asset managers to utilize Rapid Addition’s order routing service, lowering trading costs.

JSE-FIX serves as the latest addition to the JSE’s growing infrastructure suite. The JSE expanded its relationship with cloud computing provider, Beeks Group for its second co-location offering – Colo 2.0.

Colo 2.0 provides a cost-efficient private cloud service for institutional and retail brokers and institutional investors with low-latency access to the South African market.

Located meters away from the main matching engine, the roundtrip travel time of a request is 11 microseconds, eliminating the possibility of latency arbitrage.

Colo 2.0 provides many of the same benefits as the original, but at a competitive price for smaller trading firms. Colocation was set up 11 years ago to meet the needs of high frequency traders and market makers on the JSE. The initiative has been a success with seven of the world’s ten largest high frequency traders active on the JSE.

There has been stronger than expected demand for Colo 2.0 leading to additional requests such as increasing resilience of the service. The enhanced partnership is enabling Colo 2.0 to provide a modern, scalable and resilient cloud solution. Through a robust infrastructure solution, the JSE is enabling African trading firms to remain competitive globally where AI and algorithmic trading is growing rapidly.

As Africa’s largest stock exchange, the JSE serves as the gateway for global investors looking to invest in the continent. Around $1.7bn worth of shares are traded daily on the exchange, with 90% of activity traded on the JSE’s orderbook. The initiatives supported by Rapid Addition and Beeks will further increase the attractiveness of the JSE’s market while also providing services and connectivity global investors are accustomed to.

“The JSE is committed to building an electronic trading offering that is competitive in global capital markets,” said Valdene Reddy, director of capital markets at the JSE. “We continue to enhance access through the expansion and enrichment of our technology in efforts to deepen liquidity and broaden connectivity. We remain focused on the right collaborations and offerings to create a future-fit, innovative, JSE today.”

Gordon McArthur, CEO of Beeks, added: “The Beeks and JSE partnership is creating a unique offering through Colo 2.0. We are pleased to support a service that combines on-demand private cloud computing with low-latency analytics.”

Source: Johannesburg Stock Exchange