To get the highest performance possible from managing market data operations, especially connectivity, a deterministic approach may not be the only one that should be taken, observed Louis Lovas, director of solutions at OneMarketData, who spoke in a December 8 webinar sponsored by the transaction cost analysis provider, and hosted by Intelligent Trading Technology and A-Team Group.
“If you consider from the consuming applications for data that data quality not only includes the idea of determinate behavior, but also elements that are more natural to the applications for firms that are trading across markets, that’s where you want the consistency in symbols and symbol continuity across market centers,” Lovas said.
Separating the parts of a transaction can affect how data consumers get information about that transaction, observed Mark Reece, director of professional services at MCO Europe, a financial data processing technology provider. “Depending on what you’re trying to do, you may impact the latency of your whole market data system,” he said. “Trades might impact or orders might be impacted by bursts of arrivals of market data. Similarly, if you’re a high-frequency market maker who is doing moving in futures and options, a single ticket underlying may result in a firestorm of outgoing quote updates from you. So you need to be very careful about separating those parts.”
Latency goals in relation to market data operations performance can vary, according to Ted Hruzd, senior infrastructure architect at RBC. “The goals of prop traders, market makers, high-frequency traders and arbitragers are much more latency sensitive,” he said. “Equities and futures traders are more apt to opt for ultra-low-latency. FX is lagging behind bond and commodity trading, but there have been some recent advances in electronic trading for corporate bonds.”
To best support transaction cost analysis or market impact analysis, time-stamp precision and synchronization is “vital,” said Lovas, “particularly for cross-market price discovery, or consolidation or aggregation across markets.”
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