A Flexible Approach to Market Infrastructure

The growing speed and complexity of today’s financial markets are placing all but the most technologically well-resourced participants at a strategic disadvantage. Buy- and sell-side firms, the execution venues they use, and the wide range of post-trade, market data and other service providers whose offerings they consume, are all struggling to keep up with the pace of change throughout the lifecycle of the financial transaction.

Everywhere in this lifecycle, technology is giving those willing to invest in it a competitive edge. In the pre-trade area, the growth of high frequency trading has emphasised the need for low-latency connectivity for both market and order data. Firms of all sizes are making use of collocation and proximity hosting services, in order to ensure their execution engines are as close as physically possible to the execution venues they trade on. Those wishing to compete on speed will fail unless they make the required investment in technology; for them, being second is not an option.

Where trading is not only electronic, firms are recognising the need to integrate their voice-based trading with internal data, order management and post-trade systems. This unified approach to trading infrastructure is being recognised by participants as a major factor in improving client relations, internal efficiency and even the ability to comply with stringent regulatory reporting requirements.