Low-Latency.com

In his blog last week, Andrew said he’s skeptical that advantages from investing in low latency infrastructure will be anything other than short lived.

I tend to share his opinion that low latency is passing through, though I am less of a skeptic (Andrew’s turning French). To me, the current focus on low latency is simply the way that Wall Street works, such that it does. There’s an opportunity to be had – to rise above the crowd, to make money – and so the top tier of the financial markets are all over it, doing just that (or at least they think they are).
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As prime suspects in the worldwide conspiracy that is low latency, you’d think we might be protagonists too. But while whatever low latency is helps those who’ve achieved it to beat the competition that haven’t (yet), I’m still sceptical that any advantage derived from ‘low latency’ will be short-lived. How can it not be? After all, as vendor after vendor and firm after firm heralds the arrival of yet faster access to electronic trading systems or delivery of real-time market data, at some point the “Scottie” factor surely will kick in.
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StreamBase Systems has released version 3.7 of its stream processing platform. Coupled with an enhanced developer environment, the latest release features new capabilities and resources for developing, deploying, and managing scalable CEP applications.

StreamBase News Release

Commerzbank Corporates and Markets (CBCM) has implemented Aleri Labs’ Streaming Platform to power their new foreign exchange pricing application. CBCM’s “FX Pricer” analyses a host of real-time information, and applies proprietary tick by tick validation logic and data cleansing algorithms. The engine calculates CBCM’s prices using a variety of Aleri functions as well as auditing all data and events. The calculated prices are interactively managed by CBCM’s FX traders who have the ability to control the Aleri streams using an in-house developed user interface.

Aleri’s ability to rapidly implement its technology was key to its selection. “We had an aggressive deadline for getting this project underway, but we wanted more flexibility than an off-the-shelf product could offer,” says Klaus Hoffmann, Head of Foreign Exchange, CBCM. “Aleri was able to meet our requirements. The platform had us up and running quickly, while providing the flexibility we need to deliver the performance that this market requires.”

Exchange operator and technology provider OMX has introduced Genium Market Info, a low latency distribution system for market data. Part of its new Genium market technology, the information distribution functionality incorporates core elements of Cicada’s Composer system. Cicada is providing OMX with sales support, development resources and ongoing system support.

OMX News Release

Q: When is a datafeed not a datafeed? A: When it’s a datafeed handler. When we were compiling our wonderful report Faster Than A Speeding Bullet: Low Latency Architectures And Building Blocks For Tomorrow’s Trading Applications, we included profiles of vendors who sell datafeed handlers. At first, we left out Reuters Data Feed Direct because we had it marked as a datafeed itself, but – upon further investigation – we decided we had to include it. For Reuters Data Feed Direct is perhaps more a datafeed handler than it is a datafeed itself.
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Jeffrey Birnbaum - former Managing Director and Chief Technical Architect for the Institutional Securities division at Morgan Stanley, who left the firm quietly last year - has re-emerged as the founder of a stealth mode start-up, 60East Technologies.

At 60East, he is leading the developing of the Advanced Message Processing System (AMPS) which he claims delivers unprecedented levels of performance required for real- time environments (greater than 1 million FIXML messages per second) using multi- socket, multi- core commodity computers and 10 gigabit networking.

Birnbaum will be presenting alongside IBM at tomorrow’s Linux/Open Source on Wall Street event in New York City.

Reuters has increased the number of venues available via Reuters Data Feed Direct by adding six new venues to its direct exchange data service in locations across Asia and Europe. The additional feeds include the Korean Stock Exchange, Tokyo Stock Exchange Flex, Osaka Securities Exchange, Euronext Cash, Euronext Liffe and Deutsche Borse XETRA. All the feeds offer level 1 and 2 coverage.

Reuters News Release

From A-Team Group’s Market Data Insight, April 2007: Activ Financial appears to be first out of the box with a hardware-based solution to clients’ low latency challenges using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. The company plans to formally introduce its ActivFeed MPU (Market Data Processing Unit) hardware accelerated feed processing platform at an event at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York on May 14.
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From A-Team Group’s Market Data Insight, April 2007: Wombat Financial Software’s collaboration last month with AMD and Cisco Technologies in a latency benchmark test conducted by Peter Lankford’s Securities Technology Analysis Center (Stac) is aimed at easing client prospects’ concerns as they mull the possibility of migrating to InfiniBand technology within their low latency market data infrastructures.
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