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My career goal is to work as a software developer for an online stock broker website or for a stock exchange. I am curious about the protocols used by the stock network. For example, what protocol does an online stock broker website use to send a sell order to a stock exchange?

Thanks.

ЯegDwight
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HideYourLoveAway
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2 Answers2

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There are many and various:- FIX - is used for messages between brokers, investment banks financial advisors etc. it has many message types such as "quote", "offer", "accept", "buy" etc. so that the various houses can negotiate and trade on an automated basis.

Each stock exchange NASDAQ,AMEX,FTSE, etc. etc. has its own proprietary protocol (and perhaps more importantly PROCEDURES) for automated trading.

Rueters, Bloomberg, etc. etc. have their own proprietary protocols for providing market information.

Each regulator such as the Securities Exchange Commission, has its on protocol for filing and querying company statements.

Then many "ordinary" financial protocols such as SWIFT for international business, ISO 8583 for credit card payments and whatever interbank payments system is supported in the countries the house operates in.

Just to complicate things a little further many widely used products such as the MUREX trading family or the FERMAT risk management products use there own APIs which are regarded as "standard" in the same way as MS Word is standard.

And to top it all most of the bulge bracket banks have in house written "backbone" applications which use private inhouse protocols.

An understanding of the underlying business of the group you are supporting (and these teams can be absurdly specialised ) is probably more useful. Deal with the various protocols on a "need to do" basis.

earcam
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James Anderson
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  • Hi, thanks for the answer ...do you happen to know what protocol would I have to use to connect to NYSE and get information such as the current price of the stock ? – HideYourLoveAway Sep 09 '10 at 12:24
  • Sorry my knowledge is with the European exchanges. However note the point about procedures. The exchanges regard information on current Stock price and latest trades as thier most valuable asset and charge accrodingly. The process for getting connected is quite complex. You might be better hooking up to Bloomberg or Rueters who re-sell this data but are much easier to deal with and have a broader range of data. – James Anderson Sep 10 '10 at 01:07
  • Back when I worked for an investment bank, I remember that the little "cards" that let you access the Bloomberg feeds (and NEAT pieces of technology they are, by the way) cost something on the order of $10,000 per. This isn't the sort of data that you're going to get cheaply, unfortunately. – Mark Nov 05 '10 at 20:05
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One protocol that I am familiar with is FIX. The site has lots of tools for implementing your own libraries as well unit testing. There are probably others, but this is one of them.

linuxuser27
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