ZagTrader

FIX Connectivity in GCC and MENA Markets: What to Plan For

Written and maintained by ZagTrader. Last reviewed . How this page is sourced and checked

FIX works the same way in Riyadh, Dubai and Kuwait City as in London or New York. What differs is the calendar the session runs on, the currencies and precision the messages carry, the language of names and text, and the settlement chain behind the fills. This guide lists the points to settle before go-live, with the public source for each market fact at the end of the page.

The trading week differs across the region

The Saudi Exchange trades Sunday to Thursday, except official holidays. The Dubai Financial Market and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange moved to a Monday to Friday week on 3 January 2022. Boursa Kuwait trades Sunday to Thursday. A firm that routes to Riyadh and Dubai therefore trades on six days of the week, and one Monday to Friday schedule does not fit all its sessions.

  • Set the session schedule per counterparty. In QuickFIX the weekly window is StartDay, EndDay, StartTime and EndTime, read as UTC unless UseLocalTime is set. A Sunday session that the engine treats as weekend will not log on.
  • Decide where sequence numbers reset. A weekly session that starts on Sunday resets on Sunday.
  • Run end-of-day jobs on the venue’s day. Day orders on a Sunday session expire on Sunday, and the drop copy and reconciliation for that day are due on Sunday.
  • Keep a holiday calendar per venue. The Eid holidays follow the Hijri calendar, whose year is about eleven days shorter than the Gregorian year, so their dates move earlier each year. Use the closing days each exchange publishes.

Currencies with three decimals

ISO 4217 gives the Kuwaiti dinar (KWD), the Bahraini dinar (BHD), the Omani rial (OMR) and the Jordanian dinar (JOD) three minor units. The Saudi riyal (SAR), UAE dirham (AED), Qatari riyal (QAR) and Egyptian pound (EGP) have two. Code that assumes two decimals fails quietly on the three-decimal currencies: a commission or net amount rounded to two places looks right on screen and breaks reconciliation later.

Arabic names and text

Instrument names, client names and free text from regional brokers and exchanges can be in Arabic. FIX has a way to carry such text explicitly: MessageEncoding (347) names the character set, with UTF-8 among its values, and encoded fields carry the text with its length in bytes, for example EncodedTextLen (354) and EncodedText (355) for free text and EncodedSecurityDescLen (350) and EncodedSecurityDesc (351) for security descriptions.

  • Agree with each counterparty whether Arabic arrives in the encoded fields, as UTF-8 in ordinary string fields, or not at all.
  • BodyLength (9) and CheckSum (10) count bytes, not characters, and an Arabic letter takes two bytes in UTF-8. A length computed on characters is wrong as soon as Arabic appears. See incorrect BodyLength.
  • Certify with real Arabic data, then open the log in the parser to check that lengths and checksums agree.

Ways to reach the markets

Firms reach Gulf and regional exchanges in three common ways: as a member over the exchange’s own interface, through a local broker that is a member, or through a network that carries orders to many brokers over one connection. Each route has its own FIX specification and certification, so the checklist in FIX connectivity checklist applies to each.

ZagTrader’s ZagFN network gives one connection to 1,100+ destinations, and the ZagTrader platform connects to 25+ markets and exchanges.

Behind the fills: settlement

Saudi listed securities have settled on T+2 since April 2017. In the Saudi post-trade programme that went live in April 2022, the depository, Edaa, introduced straight-through processing of ISO 15022 messaging. In Saudi Arabia, ZagTrader exchanges ISO 15022 messages with Edaa over the depository’s gateway: investor and account registration, settlement status, holdings statements and corporate action notifications.

Depositories and messaging standards differ by market. For each one, see securities settlement messaging in the GCC and Egypt on the MT/MX Parser, and for how a FIX fill becomes a settlement instruction, from FIX execution to settlement.

Questions

Which days does the Saudi Exchange trade?
Sunday to Thursday, except official holidays, according to the exchange’s trading cycle page.
Do the UAE exchanges trade on Sunday?
No. The Dubai Financial Market and the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange have traded Monday to Friday since 3 January 2022.
Which Gulf currencies have three decimals?
The Kuwaiti dinar (KWD), Bahraini dinar (BHD) and Omani rial (OMR), and in the wider region the Jordanian dinar (JOD), according to the ISO 4217 list.
How do I send Arabic text over FIX?
Agree it with the counterparty. FIX provides MessageEncoding (347) to name the character set and encoded fields such as EncodedText (355) with EncodedTextLen (354), which carry the bytes with their length.

Reference

Sources

  1. Saudi Exchange: trading cycle and times (trading days Sunday to Thursday)
  2. UAE Government Media Office, 8 December 2021: DFM announces new trading hours from Monday to Friday, from 3 January 2022
  3. Khaleej Times: UAE bourses revise trading hours (ADX Monday to Friday from 3 January 2022)
  4. Boursa Kuwait: contact page with trading hours, Sunday to Thursday
  5. QuickFIX configuration reference (StartDay, EndDay, StartTime, EndTime, UseLocalTime)
  6. ISO 4217 currency list, published by the maintenance agency (SIX)
  7. RBC Investor Services, Saudi Arabia market profile (T+2 since April 2017; secondary source)
  8. Argaam, 3 April 2022: Tadawul Group post-trade programme Phase 1, including ISO 15022 straight-through processing at Edaa (reproduces the group’s release)

Sources were checked on the review date shown at the top of the page. Market rules change; confirm with the exchange or the counterparty before you rely on a detail.

See also

Related errors

More guides