Introducing

OTC Upcoming Changes

Jun 7, 2022

We’re excited to announce that Polygon is bringing its easy to use, accessible APIs to the world of Over The Counter (OTC) traded equities.  In this post we’ll tell you more about the new features and what API changes to expect.

Background on OTC Market

Trading in OTC securities offers a comparatively small but important market compared to traditional exchange traded stocks.  OTC traders can gain exposure to major international firms such as TenCent, Nintendo, and Danon through American Depository Receipts (ADRs).  Exchange traded securities, through bankruptcy and other reasons, sometimes find themselves delisted and trading on the OTC market. Risk tolerant traders test their mettle in the volatile OTC penny stocks.

Traditionally, market and reference data for OTC securities has been less accessible and less transparent than the well regulated exchange market.  Now, Polygon is making OTC data available to stocks users for no additional fees!

New API Features

Polygon’s APIs are expanding to include real time trade data for the US OTC equities market.  Polygon sources this data from a FINRA feed available thanks to trade reporting obligations.  Polygon’s data captures the entire US OTC equities market including trades from common “exchanges” – technically they are Alternative Trading Systems (ATSs) – such as OTC Markets and Global OTC.

REST API Endpoint Changes

OTC data will be available across several API endpoints.  Polygon designed the REST API updates for OTC stocks to be opt-in so as not to break existing functionality.

The following endpoints will see new parameters introduced.

WebSocket Changes

Subscribing to all stocks trades will now return OTC tickers and trades in addition to the previous, exchange traded security data.

{"action":"subscribe", "params":"T.*"}

// Trades for both exchange tickers like AAPL, TSLA, etc *and* OTC tickers such as DANOY, TCEHY are returned

Subscribing to individual tickers will continue to work as before.  OTC tickers will now work alongside exchange traded tickers.  

{"action":"subscribe", "params":"T.NTDOY"}

// Behavior when subscribing to a single ticker has not changed.  OTC tickers now supported.

What Next

We'll start rolling out OTC data to Polygon's REST APIs in mid June.   The OTC websockets beta will be accessed via beta.polygon.io until official launch.

OTC data is available to all personal account holders on a stocks plan with no additional fees.  Enterprise access varies, contact us to learn more.

Want to be the first to hear when OTC data is available? Join us on slack to find out!

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  matt

  Matt Tichenor

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