Technology innovation is side-lining low latency in the drive to optimise performance and reduce complexity and cost of electronic execution infrastructure – but which technologies are finding favour and what can they deliver? Join the discussion at this week’s A-Team Group Intelligent Trading Summit in New York City to find out about technology innovation for not only execution, but also analytics, fast market data, regulatory compliance and deep learning.
The summit panel dedicated to electronic execution infrastructure will be moderated by Vishal Sood, global head of electronic trading technology and head of North America equities technology at Citi, and joined by Eric Karpman, senior independent trading technology expert; Saurabh Srivastava, senior vice president of electronic trading at Jefferies; Paul Greenberg, vice president of infrastructure architecture at BNY Mellon; Donal Byrne, CEO at Corvil; and David Polen, global head of electronic execution at Fidessa.
We caught up with Karpman and Srivastava ahead of the big day to share some thoughts on technology innovation around electronic execution. Karpman notes industry concentration on regulation and the challenges it presents, but also the need for technology innovation to help optimise the performance and reduce the costs of execution.
He says: “Before, competitive advantage was about latency. Now, it is about analysing data faster and making decisions faster, not just being closer to the exchange.” Srivastava agrees, saying: “Speed is not the name of the game at the moment. Competitive edge is in execution algos and providing insight into pre- and post-trading to our clients. Clients can’t manage what they can’t measure, so we provide tools and reports they can use to evaluate our performance, rank us among other brokerage firms and inform us about what we need to do to be their top or second top broker.”
Jefferies uses generic hardware and software to support electronic execution, bringing down costs and satisfying clients’ interests in transaction cost analysis and best execution. It also uses open source tools. Srivastava comments: “As well as using generic hardware and software, we simplify the process as much as possible using off-the-shelf, industry standard tools.”
Karpman notes the potential of innovative technologies including cloud, in-memory computing, and virtualised environments – he has seen these in use – to improve execution performance and reduce costs. He suggests Big Data analytics should use in-memory computing to keep decisions close to data, while costs can be curtailed using shared colocation racks. Outsourcing components and complexity that do not need to run in house could also provide a bonus.
To find out more about technology innovation for electronic execution, join the panel at this week’s Intelligent Trading Summit. As Karpman concludes: “The time to innovate is now. When you can manage more data faster and improve performance, there will be more opportunities, perhaps around advanced strategies and developing new products.”
