With our inaugural Intelligent Trading Summit behind us a couple of weeks ago, the show moves on to New York where, on May 13, we will kick off another packed agenda with a keynote and panel discussion examining the key attributes of what is required from an Intelligent Trading architecture.
Although some experts now say “the race to zero is over”, we are not quite writing latency off yet. But we do acknowledge that the competitive battlefield is shifting to other differentiators than speed. We also know that probably only a handful of firms (depending on definitions somewhere from 5-15) now maintain ultra-low latency services, with the balance happy to offer low latency delivery alongside other capabilities.
And it is these we will focus on. In many ways this shift has also been exacerbated by the relative demise of High Frequency Trading, given lower overall market volumes and reduced volatility. This has resulted in investors holding assets for slightly longer to generate gains, which in turn increases risk. Some believe that one way to mitigate this potential liability is to develop more intelligent trading models that are driven by more sophisticated analytics using broader, more complex and often unstructured data sources.
In the end it is expected that this more comprehensive approach will create more robust trading and execution strategies. But it brings with it, before we even start contemplating “Big Data” strategies, more challenges on how to lay the foundations that can meet these expectations.
Our opening session will therefore look at the building blocks required to ensure success, across the spectrum for pre-to-post-trade environments, and how the Enterprise architecture should be constructed. We will debate buy vs build, as well as buy & build, strategies and identify what really should be under proprietary ownership.
But we expect the panel debate to widen this to examine the role of managed services, and to ask whether these cause latency bottlenecks and other performance issues. It’s fairly certain that there will be scrutiny to understand how these can be scaled while also delivering agility and flexibility.
If the experience in London is anything to go by, I am sure the views from Wall Street will generate plenty of lively debate. After all, competitive advantage is in the local DNA.
As subsequent sessions unfold we will examine the impact of regulatory and compliance obligations, particularly the imposition of close to real-time reporting requirements, and of course we wouldn’t escape without devoting time to “Big Data” strategies and the accompanying analytics which are at the heart of so much innovation effort.
So a full day that will combine the best of the speed debate (which we recognise is still a serious issue) with the latest from the Manhattan trading rooms on what is driving priorities for investment in new IT trading and management capabilities. Reserve your places now.
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