Ultra-low latency direct market access

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Ultra-low latency direct market access is a set of technologies used as part of modern trading strategies, where speed of execution is critical. Direct market access (DMA), often combined with algorithmic trading is a means of executing trading flow on a selected trading venue by bypassing the brokers' discretionary methods. As defined by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), DMA arrangement is a process by which traders transmit orders on their own, without any handling or re-entry by another person, directly into the market’s trade matching system for execution. [1] Because of the lack of interaction with the broker, this is sometimes referred to as no-touch. DMA flow passes directly through the DMA gateway and onto the venue while passing through strict risk checking and position keeping algorithms. It is at this point that brokers may monitor the behaviour of their DMA clients.

Direct market access(DMA) is a term used in financial markets to describe electronic trading facilities that give investors wishing to trade in financial instruments a way to interact with the order book of an exchange. Normally, trading on the order book is restricted to broker-dealers and market making firms that are members of the exchange. Using DMA, investment companies and other private traders use the information technology infrastructure of sell side firms such as investment banks and the market access that those firms possess, but control the way a trading transaction is managed themselves rather than passing the order over to the broker's own in-house traders for execution. Today, DMA is often combined with algorithmic trading giving access to many different trading strategies. Certain forms of DMA, most notably "sponsored access", have raised substantial regulatory concerns because of the possibility of a malfunction by an investor to cause widespread market disruption.

Algorithmic trading is a method of executing a large order using automated pre-programmed trading instructions accounting for variables such as time, price, and volume to send small slices of the order out to the market over time. They were developed so that traders do not need to constantly watch a stock and repeatedly send those slices out manually. Popular "algos" include Percentage of Volume, Pegged, VWAP, TWAP, Implementation Shortfall, Target Close. In the twenty-first century, algorithmic trading has been gaining traction with both retail and institutional traders. Algorithmic trading is not an attempt to make a trading profit. It is simply a way to minimize the cost, market impact and risk in execution of an order. It is widely used by investment banks, pension funds, mutual funds, and hedge funds because these institutional traders need to execute large orders in markets that cannot support all of the size at once.

A broker is a person or firm who arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller for a commission when the deal is executed. A broker who also acts as a seller or as a buyer becomes a principal party to the deal. Neither role should be confused with that of an agent—one who acts on behalf of a principal party in a deal.

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Rationale

For the purpose of best execution, first to market is an important feature for some buy-side strategies such as high-frequency trading. [2] DMA therefore has to handle large volumes of orders in less than a second. Typically order volumes of over 5000 orders a second can be sent to the venue with order and execution report round trip times of 100 microseconds. Financial technology companies have such offerings. Other technologies firms offer independent products to measure such low latencies.

In financial markets, high-frequency trading (HFT) is a type of algorithmic trading characterized by high speeds, high turnover rates, and high order-to-trade ratios that leverages high-frequency financial data and electronic trading tools. While there is no single definition of HFT, among its key attributes are highly sophisticated algorithms, co-location, and very short-term investment horizons. HFT can be viewed as a primary form of algorithmic trading in finance. Specifically, it is the use of sophisticated technological tools and computer algorithms to rapidly trade securities. HFT uses proprietary trading strategies carried out by computers to move in and out of positions in seconds or fractions of a second.

See also

Dark pool

In finance, a dark pool is a private forum for trading securities, derivatives, and other financial instruments. Liquidity on these markets is called dark pool liquidity. The bulk of dark pool trades represent large trades by financial institutions that are offered away from public exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ, so that such trades remain confidential and outside the purview of the general investing public. The fragmentation of electronic trading platforms has allowed dark pools to be created, and they are normally accessed through crossing networks or directly among market participants via private contractual arrangements. Generally dark pools are not available to the public, but in some cases they may be accessed indirectly by retail investors and traders via retail brokers.

In capital markets, low latency is the use of algorithmic trading to react to market events faster than the competition to increase profitability of trades. For example, when executing arbitrage strategies the opportunity to “arb” the market may only present itself for a few milliseconds before parity is achieved. To demonstrate the value that clients put on latency, in 2007 a large global investment bank has stated that every millisecond lost results in $100m per annum in lost opportunity.

Related Research Articles

Latency is a time interval between the stimulation and response, or, from a more general point of view, a time delay between the cause and the effect of some physical change in the system being observed. Latency is physically a consequence of the limited velocity with which any physical interaction can propagate. The magnitude of this velocity is always less than or equal to the speed of light. Therefore, every physical system will experience some sort of latency, regardless of the nature of stimulation that it has been exposed to.

An electronic communication network (ECN) is a type of computerized forum or network that facilitates the trading of financial products outside traditional stock exchanges. An ECN is generally an electronic system that widely disseminates orders entered by market makers to third parties and permits the orders to be executed against in whole or in part. The primary products that are traded on ECNs are stocks and currencies. ECNs are generally passive computer-driven networks that internally match limit orders and charge a very small per share transaction fee.

Best execution refers to the duty of an investment services firm executing orders on behalf of customers to ensure the best execution possible for their customers' orders. Some of the factors the broker must consider when seeking best execution of their customers' orders include: the opportunity to get a better price than what Is currently quoted, and the likelihood and speed of execution.

An Order Management System, or OMS, is a computer software system used in a number of industries for order entry and processing.

Electronic trading platform

An electronic trading platform, also known as an online trading platform, is a website or computer program with a graphical user interface used to trade financial assets via an electronic communication network, stock exchange, alternative trading system, crossing network, or dark pool with a financial intermediary such as a stockbroker, investment bank, or broker-dealer, or directly with market makers or other participants. Financial products commonly traded include stocks, bonds, currency, exchange traded funds, commodities, and derivatives. Such platforms allow transactions to be executed from any location and are in contrast to trading via open outcry.

News analysis refers to the measurement of the various qualitative and quantitative attributes of textual news stories. Some of these attributes are: sentiment, relevance, and novelty. Expressing news stories as numbers and metadata permits the manipulation of everyday information in a mathematical and statistical way.

Flash trading, otherwise known as a flash order, is a marketable order sent to a market center that is not quoting the industry's best price or that cannot fill that order in its entirety. The order is then flashed to recipients of the venue's proprietary data feed to see if any of those firms wants to take the other side of the order.

FIX Algorithmic Trading Definition Language, better known as FIXatdl, is a standard for the exchange of meta-information required to enable algorithmic trading activity within the financial markets. It works in tandem with the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol which is the lingua franca of electronic trading in the securities market.

2010 Flash Crash United States trillion-dollar stock market crash

The May 6, 2010, Flash Crash, also known as the Crash of 2:45, the 2010 Flash Crash or simply the Flash Crash, was a United States trillion-dollar stock market crash, which started at 2:32 p.m. EDT and lasted for approximately 36 minutes. Stock indexes, such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite, collapsed and rebounded very rapidly. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its second biggest intraday point drop up to that point, plunging 998.5 points, most within minutes, only to recover a large part of the loss. It was also the second-largest intraday point swing up to that point, at 1,010.14 points. The prices of stocks, stock index futures, options and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were volatile, thus trading volume spiked. A CFTC 2014 report described it as one of the most turbulent periods in the history of financial markets.

MT4 ECN Bridge is a technology that allows a user to access interbank foreign exchange market through the MetaTrader 4 (MT4) electronic trading platform. MT4 was designed to allow trading between a broker and its clients and so did not provide for passing orders through to wholesale forex market via electronic communication networks (ECNs). In response a number of third party software companies developed Straight-through processing bridging software to allow the MT4 server to pass orders placed by clients directly to an ECN and feed trade confirmations back automatically.

Quod Financial

Quod Financial is a trading technology provider which specialises in software and services such as algorithmic trading, smart order routing and internalisation of liquidity. The firm provides electronic trading platforms to liquidity venues, exchanges, retail brokers, buy side and sell side institutions.

UNX LLC is an independent trading technology firm and a registered agency broker that provides advanced electronic trading technology solutions to a diverse client base which includes traditional asset managers, pension funds, hedge funds and sell side execution desks. UNX has offices in Burbank, California and New York, New York.

Smart order routing (SOR) is an automated process of handling orders, aimed at taking the best available opportunity throughout a range of different trading venues.

LMAX Exchange Group is a global financial technology company, which operates multiple institutional execution venues for electronic foreign exchange trading. The Group's portfolio includes LMAX Exchange, LMAX Global and LMAX Digital, the institutional crypto currency exchange.

Bloomberg Tradebook, LLC., the agency broker of Bloomberg L.P., serves global investment advisors, money managers, hedge funds, proprietary desks and broker dealers, with access to global trading venues, proprietary trading algorithms, execution consulting services, pre-and-post trade analytics and independent research.

References

  1. ↑ Udatha, Bhanu Chandar , Report on Direct Market Access and Ultra Low Latency Trading Facilities in India (March 23, 2011). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1795782
  2. ↑ Exegy Feed Handler Taps Bloomberg
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