Handelsbanken have recently launched the new data feed Nordic Light for their retail clients. This data feed enables their clients to get a comprehensive view of the fragmented market. Retail clients can now get the same information as the professionals – this is excellent!!
So, what does this new data feed mean?
Basically, they display the best price of a share taken in from different markets! Also, they aggregate the traded volume from all markets in each share! Impletmenting other feeds as well, such about loans or credicards can also give benefit to the consumers.
We argue that Nordic banks and other financial actors and fintech services such as Handelsbanken.se, Bank.se and their peers, are currently in the lead to support their retail users with correct data. We have not seen such solutions to retail users before among large European retail banks. Also we have noted that the Swedish business paper Dagens Industri supports their readers with consolidated data. This is awesome!
Equity trading in the Nordics has a very different fragmentation profile compared to the rest of Europe. In the Nordics, certain shares can be traded up to 100% on new venues. Looking at the traditional websites, media etc the reader will usually not see trades done outside the primary exchange!
Three years after MiFID the majority of retail clients using free available media still cannot see correct data. There are solutions to fix this! The Nordic Light data feed is a new standardization which solves these problems.