All posts by Trading Technologies

MiFID II algorithm testing

MiFID II: What Are the Testing Implications for Algorithmic Trading, and What Are TT’s Solutions?

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This is the third in a series of blog posts on MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II). If you missed the earlier posts, see MiFID II: How Did We Get Here and What Does it Mean? and MiFID II and Algorithmic Trading: What You Need to Know Now.

In this post, we take a look at MiFID II testing implications for investment firms engaged in algorithmic trading and review Trading Technologies’ solutions.

Our latest software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, the TT® platform, allows customers to benefit from the lowest latency order messaging rates publicly available via an off-the-shelf trading platform. Reducing the number of instructions required to be machine-code translated by compilers and processed by the CPU radically improves time-critical efficiencies. The TT platform achieves much of this high-speed performance via their highly optimized code base and by leveraging proven techniques such as network stack kernel bypass. This combination is applied throughout the critical trading path, from market data ingestions to analytics and trade decision logic and on through to market order access.  
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MiFID II Business Men on Computer Chip

MiFID II and Algorithmic Trading: What You Need to Know Now

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As the planet’s rotation de-accelerates on its axis due to tidal forces between it and the moon, equating to the longevity of a day lengthening by 1.4 milliseconds every hundred years, both our appetites and dependencies to accelerate efficiencies via algorithms will inevitably draw greater scrutiny.

This is the second in a series of blog posts on MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II). If you missed the first post, see MiFID II: How Did We Get Here and What Does it Mean? Continuing to review MiFID II, algorithms form the bedrock of modern electronic trading and, unsurprisingly, are of significance in the regulation. This post introduces an overview of the focus of the regulation and its concepts specific to algorithmic trading.

Trading Technologies provides a sophisticated and industry-tested product suite of automated order types and tools including TT’s Autospreader®, ADL®, APIs and synthetic order types, such as OCOs and Icebergs. These order types are in scope under MiFID II. Having reviewed the regulation, it is clear that the bar has been deliberately set at a level to capture a greater swath of automated order types in order to prevent systemic risk and address G20 concerns. Read on for an overview. Continue Reading →

Dialing Up Availability on the TT® Platform

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At TT, we take outages personally, and any time there is a major issue on any of our platforms, it’s “all hands on deck.” Still, we would much rather avoid outages and unplanned downtime altogether. So, I would like to take this opportunity to let you know what we’ve done over the last few years to avoid system outages and how the TT platform ups the ante with respect to delivering superior system availability. And while much of this blog post relates to the newer TT platform, rest assured, we are committed to delivering the highest possible availability on all platforms: TT, X_TRADER® ASP and TTNET™.

Operating and maintaining a global trading platform is not a trivial endeavor and certainly not your typical IT operation. These systems are by their very nature complex—normalizing and bridging a multitude of different market and customer systems, each speaking a different language and each with different needs—and high availability is a must. Throw multi-region regulatory compliance, security requirements, performance and counter-party upgrades in the mix and it’s not hard to see how the systems get exponentially more difficult to maintain and operate.

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Dollars Eris

As the U.S. Monetary Policy Debate Heats Up, It’s Not Just the Fed Funds Rate in Play

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The following is a guest post by Christopher Rodriguez, chief marketing and relationship management officer of Eris Exchange, and Geoffrey Sharp, Eris’ managing director and head of sales. Eris is a U.S. futures exchange that offers listed interest rate swap futures. Trading Technologies offers connectivity to Eris through both the TT® and X_TRADER® platforms.

Eris Fed FundsThe last 30 years of monetary policy have been dominated by control of short rates. But with an unprecedented buildup of central bank balance sheets since the global financial crisis, central banks now have another lever, and their impact on long rates cannot be ignored. Specifically, the Fed has started to signal a desire to reduce the size of its balance sheet, which could commence later this year. There is little doubt that we are in uncharted territory, with limited precedent or standard to follow, and this normalization needs to be balanced against the impact of further rate hikes and the recent apparent softening of U.S. economic data.
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MiFID II Compliance

MiFID II: How Did We Get Here and What Does It Mean?

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As the industry has been preparing for the implementation of MiFID II (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II) in 2018, so too has Trading Technologies been working closely with our clients on planning and executing compliance solutions. Over the next few months, I will be sharing my thoughts and TT’s point of view on MiFID II and industry implications. We begin the first in a series of blog posts with what is MiFID, how did we get here and what does it all mean?

MiFID II is a consequential and reactionary financial regulation born from MiFID I and the same G20 Pittsburgh meeting in 2009 that instigated the blueprints of its older siblings, Dodd-Frank, EMIR, REITS and, recently, the seemingly stalled Regulation Automated Trading (Reg AT), post the 2008 financial crash.

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