tastytrade has enhanced its platform and trading experience by integrating CME Group's market data feed and order entry API for user-defined spreads (UDS). Through this collaboration, tastytrade expanded the range of trading opportunities for its customers. tastytrade’s integration of CME Group's robust infrastructure further solidifies its position as a leading platform for active, self-directed investors.

tastytrade is a premier online brokerage firm founded in 2017 by entrepreneurs and former options traders who recognized a gap in the market for self-directed investors. As an affiliate of global fintech company IG Group, tastytrade provides a powerful platform with advanced technology, competitive commissions, and superior customer service. Its mission is to empower investors by demystifying trading and financial markets through education, tools, and technology. 

As an innovator in the active trading space, tastytrade was constrained by its previous technology when it came to offering a full range of user-defined spreads. The process of creating, pricing and executing these complex instruments was a significant technical challenge. Their market data infrastructure lacked the dynamic capabilities required, which limited the platform to offering only very simplistic spreads. This limitation made it difficult for tastytrade to differentiate its platform in a highly competitive market.

After evaluating various solutions, tastytrade chose CME Group's market data feed and CME Direct order entry API. The decision was a natural fit for their technology stack, particularly given the GCP-hosted infrastructure, which enabled seamless and rapid integration.

The key aspects of the solution included:

• Novel instrument creation: CME Group's technology provided a unique and flexible interface for creating new spread instruments, a significant improvement over other market data sources. This allowed tastytrade to quickly and dynamically add new tradable instruments.
• Optimized order entry workflow: The CME Direct order entry API allowed tastytrade to isolate the spread definition process to a different system. This architectural separation created a more robust and fault-tolerant trading system, allowing their trade engine to focus solely on order routing.

The integration allows tastytrade to support a much wider array of spreads, making order placement easier and faster for their clients. The pub/sub feed from CME Group has also been "incredibly easy" to run, with a system built to be resilient and self-healing.

The success of the partnership is backed by measurable results from a 30-day before-and-after analysis:

• Increased multi-leg futures options orders: The percentage of multi-leg futures options orders has grown from approximately 37% to 46%.
• More trading volume: The new feature release resulted in an expected increase of over 67,200 additional trades in just the first 21 trading days.
• Greater customer engagement: The percentage of traders with multi-leg futures options orders per day increased from 62% to 67% across the entire customer base.