The quest for speed has driven the development of high-frequency trading technology in recent years, but the next step in the evolution of HFT architecture will see firms focus on securing access to colocation facilities and analytical tools that are capable of complex number crunching, say executives of OneMarketData, a tick data management and analytics company.
“Firms might have market data, research, black box, market access and other applications from multiple vendors all sitting in the colocation facility of and exchange, maximising the opportunities available from being right next to the exchange's matching engine,” said Richard Chmiel, vice president, global sales at OneMarketData while attending the second annual Trading Architecture conference in Hong Kong.
“Over the last three-to-four years, speed has been a very critical factor, particularly for market makers. But the firms that are starting up now are putting more emphasis on using analytics to find new patterns. To do that, they have to analyse ever-increasing amounts of historical and real-time data,” added Denis Sweeney, Tokyo-based director of sales, Asia Pacific at OneMarketData.
OneMarketData, headquartered in the US with offices in London and Tokyo, offers a suite of solutions, including OneTick and OneQuantData. OneTick, the company's flagship product, addresses the market's need for intraday data collection, archiving, retrieval and analytics across a wide spectrum of users from various departments. OneQuantData delivers a comprehensive repository of historical reference and pricing data designed specifically for the global equities market.
The firm recently made its OneTick solution available to the faculty of business administration (FBA) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) to facilitate teaching and research at its Finance Trading Laboratory. The lab was launched in November 2010 and is fully equipped with Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters terminals and supported by real-time data feeds from the world’s major stock exchanges. It offers hands-on training for the MBA, MSc and executive education programs.
“Adding OneTick offers a great improvement for our trading lab, as we're able to back-test using real streaming tick-data and perform live trading simulations for high-frequency trading strategies,” according to Professor Ralph van Put, adjunct professor of FBA at CUHK.
OneMarketData has already made OneTick available to Columbia University in New York and Rotterdam School of Management. “Universities that are focused on research and finance are intrigued with quantitative research and analysis and algorithmic trading. The reason they are interested in our product is because they need a way to store and analyze massive amounts of tick data,” Chmiel added.
Recent additions to OneMarketData's client base include Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking and Vegasoul Capital Management, a research-driven asset management firm focused on a quantitative approach to trading.
Societe Generale selected OneMarketData's OneTick database and complex event processing (CEP) system for electronic foreign exchange trading. The FX division will use OneTick for pre- and post-trade analysis and data storage as well as real-time production monitoring and back-testing of strategies and algorithms. OneTick will store and analyse Societe Generale's internally generated prices and data while also providing access to Thomson Reuters Integrated Data Network full and conflated feeds.
Built from inception as a single integrated system, OneTick Database and CEP enables users to write a single set of code for historical analysis and real-time signal generation, run queries that span historical and real-time data and apply OneTick analytics to these data processes. With OneTick, users greatly reduce costs associated with licensing, installing and maintaining separate data management and CEP systems by leveraging a single solution that costs the same as most independent systems while also being able to collect and analyze both historical and real-time data.
OneTick replaced Societe Generale'a previous system based on its ability to seamlessly manage exploding data volumes and meet the firm's low-latency needs. Chmiel noted, “With OneTick, Societe Generale's FX team will be able to tap into the platform's speed and scalability to manage growing data volumes and deliver robust and precise analytics. They will also be able to lower their total cost of ownership while still maintaining the speed and performance necessary to compete in this market.”
Global quantitative trading shop Vegasoul Capital Management selected the OneTick database and CEP for real-time and historical market data storage and analysis. OneTick will be deployed to support Vegasoul's quantitative trading strategies and proprietary risk management systems, and to help manage the firm's investing practices, which span 90 global markets and a range of asset classes.
“We needed an integrated and cost-effective tick data management solution that could scale as we continue to grow,” said Vincent Wong, founder and CIO at Vegasoul Capital Management. “OneTick can support our data-intensive strategies and gives us the flexibility and intuitive architecture that we need to continue to grow in the marketplace.”
Author: Jill Wong