The economics of modernising equities trading infrastructure

Equities markets are becoming more fragmented, interconnected and continuously available. Liquidity is spreading across venues and geographies, trading hours are extending, and firms are processing more market data and supporting increasingly complex execution workflows.

These changes are placing new demands on trading infrastructure. Many traditional platforms continue to deliver excellent latency and throughput, but were designed for an environment of defined trading sessions and predictable maintenance windows. As markets move towards 24/5 and potentially 24/7 trading, firms increasingly need infrastructure that can evolve while remaining continuously available.

This TradingTech Insight white paper, commissioned by Adaptive, examines the economics of modernising equities trading infrastructure and the technical and commercial considerations shaping firms’ technology strategies.

The paper explores:

• The impact of fragmented liquidity and extended trading hours on infrastructure requirements
• Why the cost and complexity of changing traditional architectures is becoming a strategic constraint
• The capabilities required of modern equities platforms, including resilience, scalability, observability and extensibility
• The commercial considerations around build, buy and accelerator approaches
• How modular architectures and reusable foundations can help firms retain control while reducing time to value

As equities markets continue to evolve, the ability to change infrastructure safely and efficiently is becoming as important as its underlying performance.