Market Data for Different Asset Classes (Stocks, Forex, Commodities, Derivatives...)
Market data does not behave the same way across asset classes. Equity prices, currency rates, commodity prices, and derivatives data each have different sources, update frequencies, and analytical requirements.
Understanding what each class produces — and where to get it — is a precondition for cross-asset analysis.
Equity market data
Stock market data covers prices, trading volumes, and market capitalisation for individual equities and indices. The primary sources are exchanges themselves — NYSE, Nasdaq, Deutsche Börse, Euronext — which publish official price and volume data. This data is then distributed by providers such as Infront, Bloomberg, and LSEG to end users.
Equity analysis typically combines real-time price data for trading decisions with historical records for backtesting and trend analysis. Corporate actions — splits, dividends, rights issues — require adjustments to historical price series; without them, long-term charts and backtests produce misleading results.
Forex market data
Forex data covers exchange rates between currency pairs, traded continuously across global banking and electronic networks. The forex market has no central exchange, which means prices come from aggregated quotes across banks, ECNs, and brokers rather than a single authoritative source.
Key data points include spot rates, forward rates, bid/ask spreads, and trading volumes. Market sentiment — positioning data from sources such as the CFTC's Commitments of Traders report — is used alongside price data to assess whether large participants are net long or short on a currency. The COT data feed covers this report as a structured time series.
Because currency exposure affects any cross-border position, forex data is relevant not only for currency traders but for equity and commodity investors managing international allocations.
Commodities market data
Commodity prices are driven by supply and demand dynamics, geopolitical events, seasonal factors, and currency movements — particularly the US dollar, in which most commodities are priced globally. The main data sources are commodity exchanges: CME Group (CBOT, NYMEX, COMEX) for energy, grains, and metals; ICE for energy and soft commodities; Eurex for European commodity futures.
For futures-based commodity trading, relevant data includes front-month and further-dated contract prices, open interest, and volume. Futures data for energy, metals, and agricultural commodities is part of the TAI-PAN feed across these exchanges.
Derivatives market data
Derivatives data is more complex than the underlying asset classes because each instrument has its own expiry, strike, and contract structure. Options data includes bid/ask for each strike and expiry, implied volatility, open interest, and the Greeks (delta, gamma, theta, vega). This is the data that options screening tools such as the TradesScanner use to identify potential trades.
For a market-wide view of derivatives positioning, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) publishes quarterly statistics on notional amounts outstanding across dealer banks. This covers interest rate, FX, equity, and credit derivatives globally and is publicly available on the BIS website. It is aggregate data intended for macro analysis, not for trading signals.
Cross-asset data and TAI-PAN
Combining data across asset classes produces a more complete picture of market conditions than any single class can provide. Correlations between equity volatility, currency movements, commodity prices, and interest rate futures shift over different market regimes; tracking all four simultaneously shows relationships that a single-asset view misses.
TAI-PAN, provided by Lenz + Partner — part of the Infront Group — covers equities, indices, futures, forex, commodities, and bonds through a single feed with direct exchange connections. Subscriptions are modular by exchange package. Historical records cover daily data from 1987 and intraday data from 2002. A 30-day trial is available for €1.
