Nasdaq OMX’s Ultrafeed aggregates data across asset classes.

High-frequency trading applications are being provided with state of the art data feeds that eliminate the need to consolidate disparate data from multiple exchanges.

Nasdaq OMX Group’s UltraFeed, for example, is a highly-efficient data feed that aggregates all North American equity, options, futures and index data feeds.

“UltraFeed will be a customizable data feed that will initially carry normalized message formats by asset class, including equities, options, futures, indexes and mutual funds,” Brian Hyndman, senior vice president of Nasdaq OMX Global Data Products, told Markets Media.

“It is being built in response to industry demand, including those in the retail and institutional sectors as well as high frequency traders,” he said. “Once UltraFeed is fully operational, we plan to expand it to other markets depending on demand.”

UltraFeed will first be delivered to QUODD Financial Information Services, which will provide UltraFeed to its approximately 550 downstream client firms who, in turn, feed thousands of end-users. QUODD customers will benefit from UltraFeed’s customizable messaging standard for equity, options, futures and index data.

“UltraFeed offers clients an easier way to process data from Nasdaq and numerous other North American exchanges,” Hyndman said. “Because it is built using INET technologies, clients will be able to receive market data in a highly efficient and more cost effective manner.”

As part of the UltraFeed initiative, QUODD Financial Information Services will enhance its market data cache technology. With the implementation of UltraFeed as QUODD’s new data source in 2012, QUODD will expand its product offering to include NASDAQ TotalView for clients wishing to access depth of book data.

“UltraFeed gives us the ability to manage our own ticker plant, ensuring faster processing times and greater reliability,” said Dennis Cassidy, president and CEO of QUODD Financial Information Services.

Market data products represent a burgeoning line of business for exchanges. In addition to selling their own data, they are pursuing distribution deals with other exchanges to make their data available to each other’s customers.

TMX Datalinx, the Toronto Stock Exchange’s information services division, has entered into an agreement with Nasdaq OMX Global Data Products to make each marketplace’s market data available in their respective co-location facilities

Nasdaq OMX is providing Russia’s RTS Exchange with a variety of services to help ensure RTS market data clients achieve and maintain compliance with the exchange’s data policies and best practices.