Using FID259 to identify your market data records
Overview
The following article provides the developer a structured approach to identify the
wide array of Market Data Asset classes offered within Thomson Reuters when
building their market data applications. Embedded within each market data record,
resides the Field ID (FID) 259 (RECORDTYPE) that enables the developer to
programmatically decipher the type of asset presented. Available within the Eikon
Desktop Application or the convenient SpeedGuide Utility, developers can easily
navigate through these guides to better understand the meaning behind the values
contained within FID 259.
The basic problem
Developers building complex market data applications, may need a structured way of
managing multiple, complex classes of data available from Thomson Reuters.
Having a way to identify with these multiple types of data formats will greatly simplify
data processing efforts. For example, Thomson Reuters market data records span
multiple assets such as Equities, Fixed Income, Option Chains, Foreign Exchange,
Futures, etc. In each case, the fields within these asset records differ.
For example, an Equity instrument contains important elements traders would
expect to see such:





last
bid price
ask price
volume
etc.
Whereas a Fixed Income instrument contains slightly different important elements
such as:





bid price
ask price
bid yield
askyield
etc.
In the above comparison, as expected, some of the Fixed Income fields will not be
present within an Equity record. As a result, it is imperative that data processing
must be able to identify the asset in order to pull out the relevant details. Thomson
Reuters Market Data APIs, such as the Elektron Message API (EMA), are designed
to be data agnostic. That is, the APIs do not have any knowledge around the type of
data requested. As such, when data arrives, it is up to the application developer to
determine the nature of the asset. In such a scenario, processing can be somewhat
clunky if there is no knowledge of the type of data received.
FID 259 (RECORDTYPE)
When requesting for market data, the first response or REFRESH message
received, will carry a common FID identifying the type of record, i.e. FID 259
(RECORDTYPE). FID 259 holds a numeric field that represents the type of asset for
that record. This information is necessary for an application to determine how to
properly process that data record.
For example, when pulling up a typical Fixed Income instrument within the
SpeedGuide utility, we see the following:
In the above scenario, FID 259 contains a value of 33, which represents a Fixed
Income Record. As a result, developers will be able to identify what the incoming
image is based on the understanding of the values contained within FID 259 to
process the records accordingly.
Understanding FID 259
The SpeedGuide utility provides a quick way for the developer to determine the
values defined within FID 259. Due to the complexity of data, Thomson Reuters
created convenient instrument codes, i.e. RICs, to document the values represented
within this FID. At the root, the RIC FID259/1 represents the home page detailing the
meaning behind this FID. Utilizing the SpeedGuide, developers can easily puruse
and decipher these codes enabling them to understand and build algorithms to
process any type of asset.
Using the SpeedGuide, the user can pull up the documentation for this FID:
The above page defines a matrix of codes the user can cross reference to determine
the nature of data associated with a given record type. In our example, the FID 259
value of 33 is cross referenced to the row (Asset Class) "TSY" and column
(Instrument Type) "b". Within this page, we can navigate to the following pages, i.e.
FID259/2, FID259/3, etc to determine what these 2 values represent.
For example, on page FID259/2, we can see the Assert Class "TSY":
And navigating to page FID259/4, we can see the Instrument Type "b":
The net result is that when we subscribed to the U.S 30-year Treasury bond
(RIC: US30YT=RR), we can determine that a value of 33 within FID 259 indicates
the record is an Treasury Debt Cash Instrument Record. Developers can use this
knowledge to build algorithms to manage multiple asset types and confidently map
data accurately.