By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) Wednesday said it has trained 627 Stockbrokers on the NASDAQ X-Stream a new trading platform to replace the existing Horizon Trading engine as part of its trading technology transformation programme.
The NSE said this in a Release by Dante Ibidapo Martins, Head Public Relations and Nwando Ajene Head | Corporate Communication both of the Exchange and made available to InvestAdvocate in Lagos Nigeria.
According to the NSE, the trainings were spread across various parts of the country and executed over a two (2) month period in preparation for the third quarter (Q3) 2013 launch of the engine.
Ade Bajomo, Executive Director (ED) Market Operations and Technology of the Exchange, said the NSE organized comprehensive hands-on training sessions for member firms and their stockbrokers to get fully acquainted with the new platform as part of steps being taken to ensure its successful launch.
According to Bajomo, from July 2013 till date, there have been over 50 training sessions held in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, where over 95 percent (95%) of the registered member firms have already successfully completed the training course and formally certified to use the platform.
“Feedback from the stockbrokers on the quality of the training has been positive and this is very important in terms of our overall readiness to cutover smoothly to the new platform,†he said.
Bajomo affirmed that Xgen opens up an unprecedented level of innovative trading capabilities for the Nigerian capital market, providing low latency trading, straight through processing from broker order management systems to the Exchange, direct market access for the buy-side and mobile access through smartphones to the retail investors, leveraging on the 120 million mobile phone penetration already in the country.
“As the Nigerian capital market grows and expands its vision for greater market efficiency, liquidity and transparency, we are poised to supporting its efforts through our proven trading technologies and processes,†Bajomo said.
In April 2012, the Nigerian bourse signed on the multinational financial services powerhouse, NASDAQ OMX System for the upgrading of its Trading Platform to the cutting-edge NASDAQ X-Stream which is a high performance, robust and scalable, multi-asset, multi-market matching trading engine.
The new Trading Platform will provide the NSE with the fastest trading engine in Africa and investors, through their stockbrokers, will have real-time access to market prices, their portfolios and be enabled to execute market orders in near real-time from anywhere and on a wide range of devices.
