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General Q/A
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re: Alternate Identifier
John Greenan / Alignment Systems
12 Jun 2003 2:59AM ETChris,
55 - Symbol - is generally the exchange mnemonic (in the UK - TIDM) such as VOD for Vodafone, MSFT for Microsoft etc. But, FIX is used for non-exchange traded instruments like (in the UK) unit trusts - where there is no exchange mnemonic, so using 55 alone is not sufficient to identify all instruments.
To solve that issue, the use of SecurityId and SecurityIdSource will work for a collective investment such as a unit trust.
But, that's not always sufficient when you have a dual (or more) listed instrument. For a multi-listed instrument fields 48 and 22 can be used to specify WHAT you are trading ( ie "0004455" and the enumerated value for Sedol to specify Abbey National).
But to be fully accurate you may need to specify WHERE you are trading and for that you need to specify the exchange as well using fields 207 SecurityExchange and/or 100 ExDestination.
In a number of FIX implementations I have seen the data in symbol is garbage (to fill in a required field) and the instrument is really identified as a combination of SecurityId, SecurityIdSource and Security Exchange.
Some implementations use the Reuters exchange mnemonics (".L" for the LSE) whereas from FIX 4.3 and up the specification is for using ISO MIC codes ("XLON" for the LSE).
And - at least one implementation of 4.3 will still use the reuters exchange mnemonics - since "those are the ones that the traders remember".
Hope that helps.
> What is the puropse of FIX.48 and FIX.22?
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> This may seem like an obvious question, but if FIX.55 is a required field, isn't that ultimately the instrument identifier? Is it implied that if 48 and 22 are sent, that those fields should be the primary identifier?
>
re: Alternate Identifier
John Greenan / Alignment Systems 12 Jun 2003 2:59AM ET
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