Turkdex set to launch new trading platform

Turkeys financial derivatives exchange Turkdex will be launching a new Trading Platform as it copes with record trading volumes and growing number of participants. The new trading platform is planned to go live on May 25, 2012. With the new trading platform, all user screens and application programming interfaces (VOBAPI) will be renewed while comprehensive changes will be introduced in business rules. The related announcements and documents on the new trading platform are accessible through the following link.

The new trading platform has been available for testing and software development by our members while trainings on the new system have been organized for member representatives. In this transition stage, system tests are to be conducted with the participation of the related market participants during the month of April.

The upcoming tests shall include testing of various scenarios and observation of the performance of the system during high frequency orders/trading volume periods. The behavior of the system under real market conditions shall also be tested. These tests are to be continued during the month of May. Within the months of April and May, evaluation meetings will be held to discuss the stages of preparation of our data vendors. Before the official launch of the new trading platform, active participation of TurkDEX data vendors in the testing process and the completion of their software development are of crucial importance to ensure the integration of data vendors’ service with the new trading platform.

Turkeys financial regulator; CMB introduced new onshore trading regulations governing spot Forex . The Turkish market is estimated to trade a significant $20 billion a day. Turkdex was introduced in 2005. It has been growing YOY as the Turkish economy has maintained economic growth after the banking crisis, and with stood the credit crunch.Contracts tradebale on the exchange include futures on Turkish government bonds (91 and 365-day T-bills), futures linked to the Istanbul Stock Exchange's ISE-30 and ISE-100 indexes, currency pairs (Turkish lira against the euro and the U.S. dollar) and two commodity futures: Anatolian red wheat and Aegean cotton).

Forexmagnates team wrote a detailed report on the status of FX in Turkey, available in the latest quarterly report.