Growth Drivers

New High-Value Content, Capabilities and Offerings

Automated Trading

In trading rooms around the world, there is a proliferation of sophisticated automated trading systems that rely on complex algorithms to execute the purchase and sale of securities. These algorithmic engines require exceptionally fast delivery of information, typically measured in milliseconds or even less than one millisecond. Interactive Data has established itself as a leading provider of low latency data services that are used by a broad range of financial institutions, trading platforms and financial web portals.

Speed, resiliency and reliable service delivery are fundamental to helping the world’s largest and most innovative institutions with their real-time market data requirements. However, meeting these requirements is further compounded by surging market data volumes resulting from the adoption of algorithmic trading applications, auto-quoting by remote market makers, and the growing appeal of electronic exchanges and other opaque trading venues that anonymously connect buyers and sellers. During 2008, the Company continued its global efforts to reduce the time it takes to collate real-time data from over 450 exchanges and other sources, and deliver it to customers.

For major institutions with global trading strategies or smaller regional firms focused on their local marketplaces, it is critical that we continually enhance the breadth and depth of our real-time market coverage. During the past year, we took steps to significantly strengthen our real-time market coverage. In 2008, we added a number of exchanges in the Middle East and Africa, as well as emerging exchanges and trading platforms such as BATS Trading, the operator of the third-largest U.S. equity market, and the Turquoise multilateral trading facility, which provides electronic execution services to buyers and sellers of pan-European equities. Going forward, we plan to continue adding exchanges and other sources with an emphasis on those in Asia as well as the Middle East.

"We continue to validate the implicit trust that our customers worldwide have placed in our organization."

We also continued to broaden our real-time servicesinteractive in 2008.  In August, we introduced PlusFeed SelectSM, a cost-effective, hosted “watch list”-based real-time datafeed service. PlusFeed Select is targeted at a variety of institutions including hedge funds, order management systems, portfolio managers, third-party application providers, web sites, and firms that have investment strategies that require access to a modest subset of real-time information across a variety of market sources and asset classes. PlusFeed Select is an extension of PlusFeedSM, Interactive Data’s consolidated high-quality, low latency digital datafeed that powers algorithmic and electronic trading applications. The PlusFeed suite of low latency data services, along with DirectPlusSM, an ultra low latency service that provides access to sub-one millisecond data directly from a major exchange, provides customers with a wide range of real-time services to address their latency sensitive trading needs.

Going forward, we plan to add new capabilities that are designed to make our real-time offerings even more bandwidth efficient and even easier to integrate into trading room operations as our customers look to migrate from their incumbent providers.