CME to Provide FX Tape
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: June 30, 2025
CME Group has unveiled plans for an FX Tape to provide centralised reference prices and a view of market liquidity from its trading central limit order book venues in futures and OTC – including EBS Market and the recently-launched FX Spot+.
The launch of FX Tape+ is due “later this year” according to CME, and, “unlike other industry reference pricing sources, which leverage indicative or curated pricing from less transparent sources, CME FX Tape+ will provide an accessible, unbiased and transparent view of the FX market, based solely on actionable, firm liquidity from CME Group’s FX spot and futures markets.”
The offering will initially cover 10 major currencies and will include a composite ‘true’ spot mid-price, combining liquidity, trades and mid-rates from across these venues. Reference data will be disseminated at 250 millisecond intervals via websocket API and historic market data files, thus “improving the ability of market participants to confidently analyse the total cost and execution of their trades”.
While it remains early days for FX Spot+, noises from within CME have been positive about its start. That said, initially at least, the majority of information on the Tape will be from the firm’s FX futures and EBS Market venues, which together account for around $110 billion per day in volume.
“By bringing together price information from our network of 1,400 institutions and over 100,000 active FX market participants, CME Group is uniquely positioned to enhance transparency in the fragmented FX market,” says Paul Houston, global head of FX products, CME Group. “CME FX Tape+ will give users a unique view of centralised spot and forward liquidity, enabling them to better manage their trading costs and benchmark their strategies.”
The Full FX View
This is not, of course, the FX industry’s first attempt at a Tape, but CME will be hoping this version goes better than that produced in 2017 by FastMatch, which found some traction, but ultimately was defeated by the sheer amount of white noise provided, as well as being an idea that was probably ahead of its time – in FX at least.
This looks to be a market data move with a difference by CME, however, as highlighted by the 250ms publishing frequency. At this pace the data is unlikely to be used by liquidity providers, however it does very much push CME into the market data for consumers side of the business. By doing so, it creates further competition for firms such as New Change FX and, potentially, Tradefeedr and BestX.
Inevitably critics are going to point to the combined spot ADV around $110 billion for CME’s currency futures and EBS Market venues – the other providers of execution data take from a wider range of sources – but the key differentiator should be the firm nature of the underlying prices (and depth). EBS Market in particular may have taken a big hit in terms of its share of FX activity, but along with LSEG’s Matching for Spot, it remains a key source of market data. Pushing this into the post-trade space for consumers to evaluate their execution adds a strong to the bow.
The challenge for FX Tape+ will inevitably be in the ultimate value of the data. There have been signs that average trade sizes are on the rise again, after almost two decades of decline, which means the new data source could face a similar problem to FastMatch – the data does not reflect the true conditions for the executing party. If that party is slicing their order up into one or two million units, the Tape will be very valuable – if they are executing in 10s or more, it will be less so.
At some stage – and this very much relies upon the success or otherwise of FX Spot+ – the Tape also needs to expand its range of markets. Very little differentiates one data source from another in the G3, however beyond that, it becomes progressively more important that a Tape provides an accurate, and robust, reflection of market conditions. At the moment, CME’s futures will provide good value in some of those markets, but not all – and given that a collaboration with LSEG is probably out of the question (but would be fascinating in terms of what it could deliver!) – CME needs FX Spot+ to fill as many of those gaps as possible over the coming year.
Again, given the speed at which the data is going to be published, CME is probably not seeking to provide a global equivalent of the NBBO in FX, but there will no doubt be hope that by attracting, in particular, non-LPs to the Tape, it will also provide an entry to its trading platforms themselves.
There has been some speculation over what CME would do with its market data business post the launch of FX Spot+, and while this does not represent the ultimate offering, as a start it is very interesting and represents another example of how the Merc is trying to build an FX business based upon more than just trading volumes.
