While I am at it - quoting someone using the term 'ASX's computer' versus ASX trading system or something a little more on the mark loses credibility right off the mark.
Co-location is definitely there, but directly plugging into the ASX computer is definitely not something you will find noted. From a quick look through it seems that all messaging from clients use FIX5.0 with whatever ASX specific messaging they have defined within the bounds off the protocol.
From memory, FIX messaging normally requires a FIX translation component that would be a component in front of the actual trading system, I assume this is still the standard architecture with trading systems - but I could be very wrong.
Regardless, noone has provided me any credible evidence (yet) that ASX is leaking the exact closing time ahead of time of the auction to professional traders who are better connected to the exchange than us retail investors.
I am happy to be open minded about this - but just do not find it likely that they would break their own trading rules with intent - and if it was a bug it would be a priority 1 defect to be dealt with quickly. If there was an incident in the past I would be interested in reading about it.
From my thinking, until someone provides some credible evidence, we should just treat it as misinformation/FUD. The only reason why I spoke up is because plenty of people are not technically minded and have not worked with exchanges in the past and might believe what I think is *just not true*.
It is an unfair playing field, but just not on this issue. On a positive note, professional traders have found a lot of their old (largely riskless) strategies no longer work due to the amount of democratisation that has been brought about by electronic trading. It is a fairer playing field than it was in the past.
