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Page Revision: 2012/09/06 11:50


This document outlines how to use the T4 FIX API 4.0 of Cunningham Trading Systems (CTS). The T4 FIX API conforms to the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) Protocol with minor improvements and customizations as presented herein.

To develop to the T4 FIX API, you need a dedicated SSL connection to a T4 FIX API server. Your FIX client will negotiate a socket TCP connection and authenticate login parameters. To assist in development, we can provide a FIX Simulator system with market depth and execution 24x5, regardless of real market hours. From the FIX API’s perspective, the FIX Simulator works exactly the same as a live FIX system.

FIX Session
In the following scenarios, the T4 API User (Client) is identified as the” Initiator” while the T4 FIX API (Server) is named the “Acceptor”. Under the FIX T4 API, a FIX session is comprised of a FIX Logon, (administrative and application) message exchanges and a FIX Logout. Under all circumstances, a FIX session spans over these 3 components. Note, the T4 FIX API session does not span over multiple logins. In the T4 FIX API, all (application level) message transport is governed by the FIX Session rules of administrative messages.

Message Integrity
The integrity of the FIX messages is of primary importance to maintain a FIX Session under the T4 FIX API. All messages must be well-formed (non-garbled and complete), delineated with the SOH delimiter character (ASCII=001), with no empty tags, carry valid value types and be in faithful conformance to the message (Tag) dictionaries of this current documentation. All messages must be delivered in sequential order as specified by the Sequence Number tag (Tag 34). Data integrity must be signed by the message CheckSum number (Tag 10). Unless specified as part of the T4 FIX API dictionaries, custom tags will be ignored and may cause a FIX Session termination. All message traffic is un-encrypted.

Message Structure
All messages (administrative and application) are expected to conform to the FIX 4.2 (Tag-Value) format. In addition to the mandatory FIX Standard Header and Standard Trailer, messages received through a client connection are expected to be fully compliant to the T4 FIX API Tag dictionaries. All messages must contain BeginString (Tag 8), BodyLength (Tag 9) and MessageType (Tag 35) as the first 3 tags. The Standard Trailer must also contain a correctly computed CheckSum number (Tag 10). Messages deviated from the above will be considered as garbled. Upon the detection of a garbled message, the current FIX Session will be subject to immediate termination. The TCP physical connection will also be dropped.

For sample and details of specific FIX messages, please refer to the description of each message type below. Note that the sample FIX messages are provided without the mandatory tags BeginString (Tag 8), MessageType (Tag 35), MessageLength (Tag 9) and CheckSum (Tag 10). For brevity, the message dictionaries are only provided with the relevant header and trailer tags. 'Note': Attempting to connect to the T4 FIX API with any other method than through the T4 FIX API is not allowed.

'Note': To complement this current T4 FIX API documentation, the FIX Protocol Version 4.2 standard can located at the FIX Protocol organization web site.

'Note': In addition to the T4 FIX API, we also provide the .NET T4 API based on Microsoft's .Net Framework 4.0. For further details on the .NET T4 API, please refer to the following link:

Description of .NET T4 API individual classes, methods and properties.

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