Financial Market Data Web Services - Xignite Blog » Products

The Best Kept Secret Feature of Our Corporate Bond Master Service

ChasCooper — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:16:51 +0000

If you look at our new corporate bond master service, XigniteBondMaster, you’ll quickly see that you can use it to get information for over 125,000 U.S. corporate bonds, including issuer information, maturity dates, coupon rates and so on. But you’re not likely to see one of the best features of the service until you roll up your sleeves and start digging around in the data: the ability to look up official CUSIP identifiers with remarkable ease.

CUSIP identifiers are highly valued throughout the industry as the de facto standard for uniquely identifying over 9.1 million financial instruments. And now you can easily look up CUSIPs for thousands of corporate bonds using XigniteBondMaster. Interested in a particular issue, but not sure what its CUSIP is? Try looking it up by the bond issuer! Or just look it up by bond name.

All CUSIP data comes from CUSIP Global Services, an organization managed by Standard & Poor’s on behalf of the American Bankers Association specifically to oversee the official set of CUSIP identifiers.

You do need to have an agreement in place with CUSIP Global Services in order to receive CUSIP data, since this is highly valued data that must be licensed first. But once you have an agreement in place, CUSIPs will automatically start appearing in your XigniteBondMaster outputs.

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5 Minute Developer: How to Build a Real-Time Stock Quote Widget in 5 Minutes

ChasCooper — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:00:22 +0000

In the next 5 minutes, you could get $5 worth of plumbing services, $30 worth of legal advice or $17 worth of psychotherapy. Or, you could just spend your next five minutes building a real-time stock quote widget. Don’t think it can be done in 5 minutes? Check out a video showing us doing it in less time.

Here’s how you can do the same thing using PHP and Eclipse, although the same basic process can be used for any language and any IDE:

Step 1: Subscribe to XigniteRealTime to get access to real-time, Level I stock quotes. If you’re not ready to subscribe yet, you can also sign up for a free trial and get access to other real-time stock quote web services such as XigniteNASDAQLastSale and XigniteBATSLastSale. You’ll need to make a few adjustments to the sample code below to point to a different web service, but nothing major.

Step 2: Start a new PHP project in Eclipse.

Step 3: Create your index.php page with the following code:

</span>Get Real-Time Quote<span style="color: #339966">

$client = new SoapClient(‘http://www.xignite.com/xRealTime.asmx?WSDL’);

$quote = $client->GetRealQuote(array(‘Exchange’ => “INET”, ‘Symbol’ => $_GET["Symbol"], ‘IncludeBidAsk’ => “false”));

echo “Last price: “, $quote->GetRealQuoteResult->Last;

Step 4: Open a browser and load your index.php page to give your new stock quote widget a spin.

Congratulations! You just built a real-time stock quote widget in PHP and made a plumber, a lawyer and a psychotherapist very disappointed in you for such a ridiculous waste of your time.

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5 Minute Developer: How to Build a Currency Converter in 5 Minutes

ChasCooper — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:00:31 +0000

Every five minutes, a business in the U.S. catches fire, someone in the UK swears, and a clock that took 5 years and £1 million to build before being unveiled by none other than Stephen Hawking, finally tells the time accurately for a second or two.

What will you do with your next 5 minutes?

Here’s a thought: Why not build a real-time forex currency converter? Sound like fun? If so, give it a try using the steps below. Or, if you’d rather leave all the fun to someone else, why not just watch a video of us doing it?

Here’s how it’s done:

Step 1: Start a new Windows application project in Visual Studio.

Step 2: Create a Web reference to http://www.xignite.com/xCurrencies.asmx?WSDL and call it XigniteCurrenciesService.

Step 3: On the Form1 design, drag and drop 3 text boxes, 2 labels, and a button, arranging them as shown in the picture. From left to right, give the text boxes the following names and default text: inputBaseAmount defaulting to 1000, inputBaseSymbol defaulting to USD, inputQuoteSymbol defaulting to EUR. One label should have a big equal sign in it and the other should have the name of labelQuoteAmount and zero for its text property. The button should read “Convert.”

Step 4: Double-click the button to create its click event handler, and give it the following 3 lines of code:

XigniteCurrenciesService.XigniteCurrencies XigniteCurrenciesWebService = new XigniteCurrenciesService.XigniteCurrencies();

XigniteCurrenciesService.ExchangeConversion Quote = XigniteCurrenciesWebService.ConvertRealTimeValue(inputBaseSymbol.Text, inputQuoteSymbol.Text, double.Parse(inputBaseAmount.Text));

labelQuoteAmount.Text = Quote.Result.ToString();

Step 5: Compile and run.

Authentication trouble? If you get an authentication error, it means you’re not being authenticated from a cookie or your IP address. Don’t worry. Just add 3 more lines after the first line of code to pass your authentication key through SOAP. Be sure to replace MYAUTHENTICATIONKEY with your own Xignite account authentication key. (Don’t have an authentication key? Just sign up to get one. Your e-mail will be your initial authentication key.)

XigniteCurrenciesService.Header objHeader = new XigniteCurrenciesService.Header();

objHeader.Username = “MYAUTHENTICATIONKEY”;

XigniteCurrenciesWebService.HeaderValue = objHeader;

Congratulations! You just spent the last five minutes far more productively than one U.S. business, one citizen of the UK, and one very expensive but very inaccurate clock.

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BGCantor On-Demand: A “Behind the Scenes” Look

ChasCooper — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:22:02 +0000

Now that the cat’s finally out of the bag on BGCantor’s new on-demand web services, I can finally take the readers of the Xignite blog back stage for a “behind the scenes” look at the making of the biggest initiative in the on-demand financial web services world since the start of Xignite.

BGCantor On-Demand offers fixed income and derivatives data via on-demand web services using Xignite’s core platform.

What happened behind the scenes? How did this new on-demand business get launched? And what did it take to launch it? Well, first and foremost, it took a great team at BGCantor Market Data. The BGCantor team was absolutely delightful to work with. Everyone was highly knowledgeable, very responsive, dedicated to accomplishing the mission and very excited about the whole project. We couldn’t have asked for a better group to work with.

Together, the BGCantor/Xignite team started by designing web services to be truly application-ready, combining Xignite’s web service experience with BGCantor’s in-depth market data knowledge. Then we coded the web services on top of the XigniteOnDemand market data distribution platform for rapid development on a robust, high-performance, highly scalable architecture. At the same time, we also built the BGCantor On-Demand website and tightly integrated it with the web services themselves. To help manage the new on-demand business, we also deployed an administrative portal for on-going management of customer accounts. At the same time, on the sales and marketing front, we worked together to find just the right usage-based pricing model to drive strong revenue growth for BGCantor while also delivering exceptional value for BGCantor’s customers. Then we collaborated on developing marketing collateral and sales tools.

As for showing you blooper videos of our behind-the-scenes footage, I’m afraid I couldn’t quite convince Legal to sign off on that. Sorry. Maybe next time.

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Causing Depth & Disruption Wherever We Go!

ChasCooper — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:22:14 +0000

I really liked how Max Bowie characterized Xignite as “disruptive” in a piece he published in Inside Market Data earlier this week, entitled “Appetite for Disruption.” He was covering our latest release of equity options web services XigniteOptions and XigniteRealTimeOptions, but his “disruptive” moniker couldn’t be more appropriate for all of Xignite as a company.

He dubbed us as “disruptive” because our equity options services changed the economics of getting options data so much that customers like iVerit are now able to create new businesses delivering this high-volume, high-expense market data at rates affordable even to small private investors over small, affordable devices like the iPhone.

But the truth is that virtually every time we launch a new web service, we see this pattern of disruptive technology creating new opportunities to penetrate existing markets much more deeply. That’s because it’s the on-demand delivery model itself, not any particular web service, that creates the order-of-magnitude changes in economics that cause disruption and new opportunities to deepen existing markets.

So thanks to Max for giving us a rep as a high-tech company running amok causing market depth and disruption wherever we go.

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It’s a Small World After All for Real-Time Stock Quotes

ChasCooper — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:44:04 +0000

I was reminded when we launched XigniteGlobalRealTime this week of how small the world has become. There was a time when traveling from Europe to my house in California would have taken months by sea, then months by covered wagon. Now I can make the trip in a single non-stop 21-hour flight. Granted, I have to brave the kid kicking the back of my seat, screaming babies, the guy with N1H1 to my right, and the guy to my left who spends all 21 hours trying to sell me life insurance while telling me his life story. But at least I don’t have to worry about scurvy… just airline food.

The world of market data has also gotten much smaller. Not too long ago, getting intraday stock quotes from Europe’s biggest exchanges was simply out of reach for any U.S. company that didn’t have a six-figure technology budget. Now even small startup companies on a shoestring budget can get real-time Level 1 stock quotes from even the smallest European exchanges, not to mention countless other exchanges around the world. What’s next? Frequent data miles for global market data usage? (Hmmm… Not a bad idea.)

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Xignite Launches New Global Currency/Forex Section

Landon Long — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:00:28 +0000

What does the Albanian Lek, Dominican Peso, Indonesian Rupiah and 140 other global currencies have in common? They can all be found in the newly updated XigniteCurrencies section. Redesigned from the ground up, the new currencies section has been expanded to provide the tools and information necessary to get up and running with Global Currency Data.

In addition to covering over 85% of the world’s currencies, there are several improvements that we are very excited about. First, we have expanded the section to include two new areas, one dedicated to providing detailed product information, and the other dedicated to providing comprehensive developer resources. We have simplified the sites navigation, while also adding cool new features including several educational videos, expanded product information and an entirely new set of interactive demo applications. We have even created a step-by-step video on how to get up and running with a simple real-time currency converter. If you haven’t visited the section recently, you should give it a peek.

Product Resources

- Currency Overview -
- What Is On-Demand -
- Live Forex Demos -
- Global Data Coverage -

Developer Resources

- How-To Video -
- Getting Started -
- Forex WSDL File -
- Web Service Operations -

What’s most exciting are the countless ways our global currency data can be used. Our customers have proven that it doesn’t matter if you’re an Aviation Catering Company, Armored Transportation Service, National Menswear Retail Chain, Global Automotive Manufacturer or Cool Online Gaming Startup, with XigniteCurrencies, the applications are truly endless.

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2009 SIFMA TMC: Smaller Show . . . Bigger Buzz

Landon Long — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:02:25 +0000

Everyone has been talking about how much smaller this year’s SIFMA Technology Management Conference was when compared with previous years, fewer exhibitors and fewer attendees. But for Xignite, this year’s show was the biggest ever. If you missed us at this year’s SIFMA TMC, we hope to see you next year. Feel free to take a look at the 2009 Xignite SIFMA TMC Photo Gallery by Clicking Here.

Despite the fact that this year’s SIFMA Show was scaled down quite a bit, we were positively overwhelmed with demand at the Xignite booth. Our staff of seven was slammed every minute they were on the floor, answering questions, giving product demos and handing out free Xignite goodies. Even after show hours were over, our booth stayed filled with people wanting to talk about on-demand web services. Even when walking the halls, I overheard many others talking about Xignite, our cool new products and exciting activities that we were sharing at the show. In retrospect, I wish we had brought a staff of twelve to handle all the demand.

Maybe it was just the Xignite shot machine and free booze we passed out. For me, it was fun demonstrating how it’s a lot easier & cheaper to get data “by the glass” (aka on-demand) rather than getting data “by the fire hose” (aka bulk files and data feeds). If it was alcohol that brought the hordes a-knocking at our booth, that would give a whole new meaning to the phrase, “generating buzz.”

Or maybe we saw so much demand because people just couldn’t resist the power of our free t-shirts, pens, mouse pads and other freebies. Maybe it was the awesome VIP Event that we hosted at the Forbes Galleries. Or perhaps everyone heard about us from the recent publicity surrounding Xignite, like the amazing coverage in Inside Market Data or product announcements surrounding XigniteOnDemand and XigniteCorporateActions.

In truth, I don’t think any amount of publicity, bribery or booze could have generated the amount of buzz we saw. Having talked to many at the show, I got a strong sense that people are more serious than ever about finding game-changing technology, like on-demand web services. Over and over again I heard people looking for way to simplify data projects, dramatically cut costs and reduce the time it takes to delivery new data initiatives to market. In these categories, Xignite is the only show in town.

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Revenge of the Red-Headed Stepchild: Corporate Actions

ChasCooper — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:10:27 +0000

Like the red-headed stepchild of reference data, corporate actions have been easy to neglect for many years, given the time, expense and difficulty of automation. That is, until the financial crisis combined with globalization to turn corporate actions into a high-priority risk factor. Like a red-headed stepchild turned Class A felon, corporate actions now threaten portfolios with greater risk than ever.

Before the crisis, globalization had already brought corporate actions to the breaking point. Portfolios filled with a wide array of securities from companies around the globe naturally required a way to handle corporate actions from a wider array of companies adhering to a wider array of standards and regulations. Let’s face it. It’s not easy to build automated systems to handle an increasingly diverse set of data delivered through an ever more diverse set of technology standards. So, it was easy for corporate action automation projects to fall off the bottom of the priority list.

But now, with the global financial crisis in full swing, the good old days of being able to neglect corporate actions appear to be over. As companies seek to respond to the crisis, they’re issuing a flood of new corporate actions to reorganize, inject new capital, retain cash and accomplish a host of other creative financial solutions. For investors and asset managers, it’s as if the red-headed stepchild is on a rampage, knocking over IT’s system building blocks, breaking analysts’ economic models for valuing securities, and generally making asset managers lose their hair.

I wish I could claim it was prophetic that we timed the release of XigniteCorporateActions to coincide with the up-surge in demand we’re seeing for automating corporate actions, but it was really more a matter of luck than foresight. Still, it’s hard to imagine a time when on-demand financial web services for corporate actions data was needed more than right now.

So, if your red-headed stepchild has been begging to go to juvie in recent months, here’s a little tough-love parenting tip: Don’t waste the next nine months trying to build your own data management prison to contain your corporate actions problems. Just dial the Xignite emergency number and ask for an on-demand web service that can lock up your corporate actions problems in a matter of weeks instead of months.

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Back to Basics with New Global Fundamentals Web Service

ChasCooper — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:28:25 +0000

If there’s a silver lining to the global financial crisis, it’s the renewed appreciation for business basics. In this period of uncertainty, company fundamentals and long-term prudence have taken center stage in place of wild-eyed speculation and short-term gains. One anecdotal example of this trend is the steady increase in demand for XigniteFundamentals, now our seventh most popular web service, providing U.S. company fundamentals and financial data.

In fact, a new appreciation for fundamentals could very well be the solution to the current crisis. Many large, successful companies originally started during tough economic times. Just a few examples include Google, Microsoft, FedEx, CNN, GE and HP. These companies might not have survived their trying early years without an intense focus on the core fundamentals that drive profitability and long-term growth.

In response to this back-to-basics trend, we’ve just launched a new web service, XigniteGlobalFundamentals, providing global company fundamentals for securities listed on many major exchanges outside the U.S. The service provides market cap, earnings per share, p/e ratios, and beta for companies around the globe. Check out XigniteGlobalFundamentals for yourself.

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