A-Team Insight White Paper
Viewpoints on Latency – Towards Zero Latency – June 2011
Trading firms continue to invest significant sums in low-latency technologies, with connectivity and co-location being a big focus, and a large proportion of IT budgets. Reducing propagation latency from the trading chain – by going with the fastest network provider and installing systems in co-location data centres – remains for many the simplest approach to...
Optimising Value from High Performance Connectivity
High frequency trading (HFT) is now a term recognised by the mainstream. This wide familiarity has coincided with maturity of HFT practices, the explosion in their use, and a flattening out of the potential returns as competition increases. Early adopters of HFT were able to leverage high-performance technologies to generate vast returns. Today, the environment...
Viewpoints on Latency – I Am Not a Number – May 2011
The “Three Ms of Latency” are a set of essential steps that turn the data that’s derived from a roster of tools – including those from contributors Corvil and TS-Associates – into meaningful, actionable information that can be leveraged to boost one’s business. The Three Ms of Latency are: Measure, Monitor and Manage. It all...
Informatica, HP and Mellanox Benchmark Report
This white paper was written by Informatica, HP, and Mellanox Technologies. The securities trading market is experiencing rapid growth in volume and complexity with a greater reliance on trading software, which is supported by sophisticated algorithms. As this market grows, so do the trading volumes, bringing existing IT infrastructure systems to their limits. Trading technology...
The Waiting Game: Standards in Corporate Actions Processing
There has been some real action of late in the standards space for corporate actions. In the US, the SEC issued a requirement for corporations to report in XBRL, and the XBRL US organisation has announced a project with the DTCC and Swift to tie the standard into ISO 20022, all of which could optimistically...
Expanding Global Identifiers in Complex Assets and Other Areas
In the post-credit crisis financial services industry, risk management, compliance and transparency have emerged as focus points for review with provision of accurate and timely data recognised as a critical element of success. Fundamental to data provision is the accurate identification of both financial instruments and counterparties – without which you cannot truly measure your...
Data Management for New Trading Opportunities
As high-frequency and quantitative trading techniques mature, trading firms are finding it harder to make money. Market practitioners are recognizing that speed of market access alone is no longer sufficient to stay ahead of the pack, as low-latency connectivity enters the mainstream. The emphasis is returning to the quality of the trading model. In order...
The Never-ending Story? Progress in the Automation of Corporate Actions
Only a few years ago – but crucially, prior to the financial crisis – surveys which reviewed progress towards corporate actions automation highlighted the key drivers for automation as reducing costs and inefficiencies. Whilst important, these were essentially technical objectives and correspondingly the debate, and its participants, inclined heavily towards the operational parts of the...
Trading Beyond the Horizon: Fragmentation Drives Multi-Market Execution
In 2010, financial markets participants will continue to expand their trading activities as liquidity increasingly becomes fragmented, seeking alpha in new markets, best execution in dark pools, arbitrage opportunities across the order book and by implementing high frequency and complex, multi-leg, cross asset class strategies. The successful operations – whether they be the proprietary desks...
Harnessing Data for Better Valuations
A-Team Group, a publishing and research company specialising in financial information technology, was commissioned by enterprise data management specialist GoldenSource to conduct research into the challenges of managing pricing and valuations data. Throughout the course of October 2009, A-Team Group researchers interviewed senior-level specialists closely aligned to market data or valuations. Several spanned multiple responsibilities...