Colocation has established itself as the access mechanism for trading firms requiring the fastest possible execution. It’s widely accepted that for firms wanting the lowest latency access to a specific market there is no substitute for placing their trading applications as close as possible to the matching engines themselves, making it the solution of choice for all but those focusing on multi-venue multi-location arbitrage.
But the perception to date has been – and justifiably so – that exchange colocation is a premium service reserved for the larger institutions. For many smaller and remote practitioners – hedge funds and prop traders who lack the IT resource normally associated with colocation – cost is a prohibitive factor in their decision whether to colocate.
High frequency trading (HFT) is now a term recognised by the mainstream. This wide familiarity has coincided with maturity of HFT practices, the explosion in their use, and a flattening out of the potential returns as competition increases.
The onward march of the algorithmic world continues with no fewer than 30 suppliers featured in this the fourth edition of the A-Team Algorithmic Trading Directory. A-Team is once again honoured to welcome you to this growing resource and hope you continue to find its contents useful. And once again our thanks go to our sponsor Fidessa.
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the A-Team Fixed Income and Foreign Exchange Electronic Trading Directory. A-Team provides comprehensive coverage of electronic trading services in the equities markets through the A-Team Alternative Trading Directory and Algorithmic Trading Directory. The objective of this new publication is to bring an equally definitive coverage to two of the most significant and complex OTC trading markets-fixed income and foreign exchange.
The year since we launched our first edition of the A-Team Alternative Trading Directory has passed by in a flash (no pun intended). And while the rate of expansion of the alternative trading system sector may have slowed – even consolidated somewhat – in the more established centres, their onward march continues both in terms of credibility, and of uptake in pastures new.
Sponsored access – and its ‘evil cousin’, so-called naked access – has received a lot of attention in recent months, as regulators scrutinise the activities of the securities industry in response to widespread public outrage: at the Credit Crunch, at the bank bailouts, at bankers’ bonuses – the list is growing every day.
