Market Data Fact Sheet

Market data is the outcome of a dynamic price formation process and is a joint product with trade execution — i.e. it is not possible to generate data without trading activity.

• Exchanges provide transparent markets. Trading on exchange contributes to fairer and more efficient markets for investors and lower costs of capital for European companies.
• Exchange trading creates highly reliable exchange market data which is publicly disseminated to the benefit of all market participants, even those who are in direct and systematic competition with exchanges. Such a transparency is unrivalled in financial markets. Instead of conducting their own price formation, alternative Trading Venues use exchange data to execute order flow while competing with the data source for the same order flow.
• The exchange price discovery process is governed by clear and strict rules in a highly regulated environment and supported by high-quality and safe IT and infrastructure services, backed up by market surveillance systems to ensure market integrity. This ensures the production of 100% reliable high-quality exchange market data.
• Exchange market data is reasonably priced overall, while at the same time, exchanges make market data available for free to investors after a 15-minutes delay, in accordance with requirements.
• In assessing the costs of market data, it is critical that the overall market data value chain is taken into account. Exchanges are frequently not “the last mile” of data distribution since most users obtain data through data redistributors and other intermediaries.
• In taking forward the current assessment of market data costs, regulators and policymakers should both consider the complete value chain and overall evolutions in capital markets, notably the ongoing issues with market structure arising from the MiFID framework. Not doing so would pose a real threat to the exchange price formation function of Exchanges.