Financial Information eXchange

FIXT redirects here. For media company and record ing across the global nancial markets through the inlabel, see FiXT Music.
creased use of standards, including the FIX Protocol
messaging language, delivering operational eciency, inThe Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol is creased transparency, and reduced costs and risk for all
market participants.
an electronic communications protocol initiated in 1992
for international real-time exchange of information related to the securities transactions and markets. With trillions of dollars traded annually on the NASDAQ alone,
nancial service entities are investing heavily in optimiz3 FIX message format layout
ing electronic trading and employing direct market access (DMA) to increase their speed to nancial markets.
Managing the delivery of trading applications and keep- The message elds are delimited using the ASCII 01
ing latency low increasingly requires an understanding of <start of header> character. They are composed of a
the FIX protocol.
header, a body, and a trailer.

History

FIX Trading Community

Up to FIX.4.4, the header contained three elds: 8 (BeginString), 9 (BodyLength), and 35 (MsgType) tags.

From FIXT.1.1 / FIX.5.0, the header contains ve

mandatory elds and one optional eld: 8 (BeginString),
The FIX Protocol specication was originally authored 9 (BodyLength), 35 (MsgType), 49 (SenderCompID), 56
in 1992 by Robert Bob Lamoureux and Chris Morstatt (TargetCompID) and 1128 (ApplVerID - if present must
to enable electronic communication of equity trading be in 6th position).
data between Fidelity Investments and Salomon BrothThe content in the body of the message is specied by
ers. FIX initially addressed information between broker(tag 35, MsgType) message type dened in the header .
dealers and their institutional clients. At the time, this
information was communicated verbally over the tele- The last eld of the message is tag 10, FIX Message
phone. Fidelity realized that information from their Checksum. It is always expressed as a three-digit number
broker-dealers could be routed to the wrong trader, or (e.g. 10=002).
simply lost when the parties hung up their phones. It Header+Body+Trailer : FIX Content
wanted such communications to be replaced with machine readable data which could then be shared among Example of a FIX message : Execution Report (Pipe
traders, analyzed, acted on and stored. For example, character is used to represent SOH character)
broker-dealers call with an indication of interest (IOI) to 8=FIX.4.2 | 9=178 | 35=8 | 49=PHLX | 56=PERS
buy or sell a block of stock. The FIX initiative created |
52=20071123-05:30:00.000
|
11=ATOMnew messages such as the IOI.
NOCCC9990900 | 20=3 | 150=E | 39=E | 55=MSFT
According to the FIX Trading Community, FIX has | 167=CS | 54=1 | 38=15 | 40=2 | 44=15 | 58=PHLX
become the de facto messaging standard for pre-trade EQUITY TESTING | 59=0 | 47=C | 32=0 | 31=0 |
and trade communication in the global equity markets, 151=15 | 14=0 | 6=0 | 10=128 |
and is expanding into the post-trade space to support (In the above FIXMessage Body length 9 is correct and
straight-through processing, as well as continuing to ex- checksum 10 was checked out by using the source availpand into foreign exchange, xed income and derivatives able from QuickFIX, an open source FIX implementamarkets.[1]
tion)

Body Order / Trade Details Info

The FIX Trading Community is the non-prot, industrydriven standards body with the mission to address the Trailer Security Check through Signature and CheckSum.
business and regulatory issues impacting multi-asset trad1

6 LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN FIX PROTOCOL

Users

FIX is widely used by both the buy side (institutions)

as well as the sell side (brokers/dealers) of the nancial
markets. Among its users are mutual funds, investment
banks, brokers, stock exchanges and ECNs. See FIX
Protocol Organization for an extensive list of major FIX
users.
FIX has become the standard electronic protocol for pretrade communications and trade execution. Although it
is mainly used for equity transactions in the front oce
area, bond, derivatives and FX-transactions are also possible. One could say that whereas SWIFT is the standard
for back oce messaging, FIX is the standard for front
oce messaging. However, today, the membership of
FIX Protocol Ltd. is extending FIX into block trade allocation and other phases of the trading process, in every
market, for virtually every asset class.

Technical specication

There are two main groups of messagesadmin and application. The admin messages handle the basics of a FIX
session. They allow for a session to be started and terminated and for recovery of missed messages. The application messages deal with the sending and receiving of
trade-related information such as an order request or information on the current state and subsequent execution
of that order.

5.1 Body length

Body length is the character count starting at tag 35
(included) all the way to tag 10 (excluded). SOH
delimiters do count in body length.
For Example: (SOH have been replaced by'|')
8=FIX.4.2|9=65|35=A|49=SERVER|56=CLIENT|34=177|52=2009010718:15:16|98=0|108=30|10=062| 0 + 0 + 5 + 10 + 10 + 7
+ 21 + 5 + 7 + 0 = 65

The FIX protocol is a technical specication for elec- Has a Body length of 65.
tronic communication of trade-related messages. It is The SOH delimiter at the end of a Tag=Value belongs to
a self-describing protocol in many ways similar to other the Tag.
self-describing protocols such as the newer XML; XML
representation of Business content of FIX messages is
known as FIXML but FIXML is not widely deployed.
FIX Session is layered on TCP (Transmission Control 5.2 Checksum
Protocol). FIX is more popular than FIXML in Securities Trading because FIXML messages are much larger The checksum algorithm of FIX consists of summing
in size due to XML tags.
up the decimal value of the ASCII representation all the
FIX messages are formed from a number of elds, each bytes up to the checksum eld (which is last) and return
eld is a tag value pairing that is separated from the next the value modulo 256.
eld by a delimiter SOH (0x01). The tag is an integer that
indicates the meaning of the eld. The value is an array
of bytes that hold a specic meaning for the particular
tag (e.g. tag 48 is securityID, a string that identies the
security; tag 22 is IDSource, an integer that indicates the 6 Latest developments in FIX proidentier class being used). The values may be in plain
tocol
text or encoded as pure binary (in which case the value
is preceded by a length eld). The FIX protocol denes
meanings for most tags, but leaves a range of tags reserved The latest version of FIX Protocol implements Transfor private use between consenting parties.
port Independence by permitting multiple versions of
The FIX protocol also denes sets of elds that make a application messages to be carried over a single version
particular message, within the set of elds some will be of Transport Independent FIX Session (FIXT.1.1 and
mandatory and others optional. The ordering of elds higher).
within the message is generally unimportant, however re- Transport Independence also paves the way for transport
peating groups are preceded by a count and encrypted protocols such as message queues and web services to be
elds are preceded by their length. The message is bro- used instead of traditional FIX over TCP.
ken into three distinct sections: the head, body and tail.
Fields must remain within the correct section and within FIX now supports algorithmic trading by use of FIX Aleach section the position may be important as elds can gorithmic Trading Denition Language FIXatdl.
act as delimiters that stop one message from running into FIX Protocol Limited has released FAST protocol which
the next. The nal eld in any FIX message is tag 10 stands for FIX Adapted for Streaming. FAST is used for
sending Multicast market data.
(checksum).

Diagrammatic representation of 10 External links

FIX system

FIX Protocol Organization - this ocial FIX Protocol website also includes a comprehensive list of
closed-source and open-source FIX engine implementations.

Customer (i.e. Investment Mgr)

FIXwiki - a Wiki dedicated to FIX. A specication

tool like FIXimate
Widereference
Area Network
Link but because it is a wiki
it also allows user notes and feedback

FIX System

Business Msg
Processing

FIXimate FIX Dictionary 4.0 4.1 4.2Supplier

4.3 4.4
(i.e. Broker/D

FIX Engine

FIX System

FIX Engine

Full FIX Protocol Dictionary on Onixs - quick and

easy to TCP/IP
use contemporary dictionary of the FIX Protocol (versions 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 5.0, 5.0.SP1,
5.0.SP2).
(TCP
Socket opened by

Business Msg
Processing

Busi
Pro

Business Msg
Processing

customer.
Persists
during
Online Resource
including
usage notes on Rapid
life
of FIX
session.)
Addition
- Online
FIX Resource including detailed
notes on usage (versions 4.0, 4.2, 5.0 SP2).
Order Management System

Order Management

FIXGlobal - Free global trading journal and ocial

magazine of the FIX Protocol.
FixSpec FIX 4.0 FIX 4.1 FIX 4.2 FIX 4.3 FIX 4.4
FIX 5.0 FIX 5.0 SP1 FIX 5.0 SP2

Trader

Trader

Trader

Trader in
Foreign
Oce

See also
Algorithmic trading platform
Algorithmic trading
FIXatdl
Electronic trading
QuickFIX, an open source FIX implementation
SWIFT:Message Types

Notes

[1] What is FIX?". The FIX Protocol Organization. June 8,

2009.

Xpedia-tradeSeries
nary/Analyzer

Xpedia
FIX
Trader

DictioTrader

What is FIX Protocol? - Non-technical overview of

FIX Protocol.

Trader

11

11
11.1

TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Financial Information eXchange Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial%20Information%20eXchange?oldid=649255737 Contributors: The Anome, Edward, Thue, RScheiber, Euphoria, Canterbury Tail, ChrisRuvolo, Rich Farmbrough, John Vandenberg,
Wsames, Leifern, H2g2bob, Crosbiesmith, Tobiwan, Dmccreary, JoshuaK, Lmatt, Gaius Cornelius, Ilionyl, Spike Wilbury, Rjlabs, FTota,
Open2universe, Tiger888, DocendoDiscimus, SmackBot, Od Mishehu, Vald, Bluebot, Sicklittlemonkey, Bigmantonyd, Djmitche, John,
Beetstra, Mesgary, Pompom2309, ChrisCork, Ilehrman, Cydebot, Solidpoint, Bmathis, Mojo Hand, Hmrox, Widefox, Jayron32, Lumbercutter, Burnash, Randy549, LittleOldMe, Camerojo, VoABot II, Granburguesa, Cander0000, Hakan.guzelgoz, R'n'B, Gareth.randall,
Nicolas39, Openshac, MoodyGod, FIXtechie, Signalhead, A4bot, Billinghurst, Moonriddengirl, Phe-bot, HotBridge, Auntof6, Nikolai.legkodimov, Juancentro, Echion2, Sbganesh, 7, Jcjollant, XLinkBot, Srinivasarao khammam, Addbot, Alik1006, Luckas-bot, Yobot,
Jack Falltrades, Fixguru, Khaderv, Wikiphile1603, Lotje, Amin Mahetar, Hobbes Goodyear, Olukoya, Renz.marcello, Vamiot, SCWilkinson, Duku Dave, Prabhupj, Widr, Fixomaniac, Dmg3, Alugupta, Mikedl778, Fritzbunwalla, Monti213, Brucesgarland, Timhealy57 and
Anonymous: 121

11.2

Images

File:Financial_Information_eXchange_System_Connectivity_Diagram.svg Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
commons/8/8f/Financial_Information_eXchange_System_Connectivity_Diagram.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work
Original artist: Gareth.randall
File:Text_document_with_red_question_mark.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Text_document_
with_red_question_mark.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Created by bdesham with Inkscape; based upon Text-x-generic.svg
from the Tango project. Original artist: Benjamin D. Esham (bdesham)

11.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0