The concept of the ‘trading day’ is rapidly evolving. For generations, the rhythm of capital markets has been associated with the opening and closing bell, a predictable cycle that provided a crucial window for settlement, risk management, and system maintenance. But is that window now closing?
A series of forward-looking discussions at A-Team Group’s recent TradingTech Briefing New York highlighted two powerful, converging forces that are placing new demands on trading infrastructure. First, the lines between asset classes are blurring, requiring unified, multi-asset platforms. Second, a consistent drive toward 24/7 trading is reducing or eliminating the concept of downtime. Together, these pressures are creating an ‘always-on’ environment that is driving a fundamental, ground-up re-evaluation of the technology that underpins global markets.
The Multi-Asset Mandate
Before tackling the 24/7 challenge, firms must first contend with the increasing complexity of their own portfolios, as the traditional distinctions between asset classes are blurring. The once-separate structures of different markets are merging: US equities are becoming more fragmented and OTC-driven, mirroring the historic structure of FX, while fixed income continues its steady move toward the electronification long seen in equities. This convergence is fundamentally changing how investment decisions are executed. For example, a single strategy may now require a trader to execute a European equity trade and, moments later, an FX transaction to hedge the currency exposure.To manage this interconnected risk and maintain capital efficiency, it is increasingly inefficient for traders to operate in technology silos. They require a single, unified workflow. This is driving the growing demand for true multi-asset Execution Management Systems (EMSs) and a far more integrated approach to the underlying infrastructure. The challenge is no longer just keeping the lights on for one market; it’s about creating a single, coherent fabric that can handle a diverse and interconnected flow of global business.
The Gauntlet: Life Without a Maintenance Window
Layered on top of this complexity is the significant technical challenge of 24/7/365 operations. For technologists, the end of the trading day has always been a critical period for deploying code, rebalancing algorithms, and performing essential maintenance. The prospect of losing that window entirely is requiring a new approach to engineering.
“We need to move into a mode of more like a cloud provider,” stated a global head of infrastructure at a major bank. He explained that this means proactively injecting failure into systems through chaos engineering to ensure they are resilient enough to handle live updates without a safety net. The entire paradigm of a scheduled change window is being replaced by the need for live, rolling updates.
Another speaker highlighted the slim margin for error: a 15-minute maintenance window is, in reality, a 7.5-minute window, because you must leave time to roll back a failed deployment. Eliminating it completely requires treating your entire infrastructure as a transactional system that can be updated on the fly. This is a significant technical undertaking that touches every layer of the stack.
The Problem Goes Down to the Protocol
This challenge runs deeper than just servers and deployment scripts; it affects the foundational protocols of the market. As one technologist with deep expertise in exchange platforms explained, the industry-standard FIX protocol was not designed for continuous operation. “The entire way that we ensure message delivery, guaranteed delivery of messages, it’s all based around sending a sequence of messages… over a period of time,” he noted. “Well, what if that period of time is forever? The protocol faces fundamental design limitations at that point.”
Addressing this requires detailed, foundational work, like re-engineering FIX libraries to support massive sequence numbers that won’t run out for centuries. This contrasts with the crypto world, where T+0 settlement and atomic transactions make 24/7 operations a native feature. Traditional finance must now engineer this capability into a system built around established, session-based principles.
Mastering the New Infrastructure Model
The message from the TradingTech Briefing was clear: building and maintaining this highly resilient, always-on infrastructure is a specialized and resource-intensive endeavour. It is not something every firm can, or should, attempt to do alone. This is driving the accelerated adoption of sophisticated managed services for critical components like messaging (Kafka) and orchestration (Kubernetes).
By leveraging specialist vendors for the commodity infrastructure, firms can offload the significant operational demands of an ‘always-on’ environment. This frees their internal teams to focus on what truly matters: building the unique business logic that will allow them to compete in an environment where trading activity is continuous.
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