Advisory & Consulting
Electronic Trading | HFT | Processes | Market Data
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Optimize Trading Operations with Expert Advisory.
Get ahead with our guidance and expertise.
What we do?
By using our advice and guidance, customers saved 60% of their development costs. Taking the right decisions and avoiding common pitfalls.
Our Technical Advisory service is designed to help investment banks and hedge fund institutions maximize their investment in electronic trading. We provide expert guidance, streamlined processes, and optimized technology to help you stay ahead of the game. Our focus is on low-latency, high-performance trading operations, and our goal is to help you achieve optimal results in the fast-paced world of electronic trading.
Whether you need help with Real-Time, low latency data processing, High-Frequency Trading (HFT), or other electronic trading systems, we have the experience and expertise to guide you towards success. Trust us to help you make the right decisions, avoid common pitfalls, and reach your goals in the dynamic world of electronic trading.
We have been featured in the news!
How we can help
Need the know-how?
When developing your trading systems, having the right experience with OMS, EMS, RMS, etc, is key.
How?
Working along with your team, advising on best practices, and basic features of all the different modules of a complex/low latency trading system.
Closing the learning gap, with specific advisory on certain functions and how to implement them.
Benefits
Cut implementation costs by more than 50%, avoiding common pitfalls due to the lack of knowledge on specific technologies.
Recognize bottle-necks
No matter how fast your systems are, they most probably have bottlenecks that can be improved.
How?
Our specialized team will do profiling on each system, find possible bottlenecks, and analyze how every hardware performs at the CPU level. This is an ongoing task.
Create stress tests of your applications in order to assure latencies and throughput in every pipeline.
Benefits
Improve processing latencies and throughput by more than 60%, gaining extra edge and performance of your trading systems.
Lack of Technical Lead & Management
Managing technology projects and its resources can be tricky, to say the least.
How?
Assembling and leading the right team for the right operations, and establishing the right metrics to improve the overall development process.
Evaluating what worked and what didn’t, avoiding potential miss-steps along the way.
Defining KPIs and performance checks for the technology setup for maximum value on investment.
Benefits
Increase the performance of your tech team, achieving the organization’s vision, targets, and goals, while keeping budgets under control. Our strong experience in the financial industry will allow you to gain a competitive advantage over your competitors.
Quantitative Funds & Trading Desks
Helping trading desks transform or enter the global multi-asset class electronic trading landscape.
How?
Overseeing the design and implementation of algos and smart order routers (SOR).
Assisting in pioneering bespoke trading engines, execution algos, quoting engines, and matching engines.
Assisting with execution algos available via seamless and existing integrations with a variety of Order Management Systems OMS/EMS platforms.
Benefits
Start shaping your tech staff immediately, having the right resources your business needs. We plan, maintain, optimize, and track deployments, timelines, and project lifecycles. Defining KPI and performance checks for the technology set-up for maximum value on investment.
Guidance developing your own Trading platform.
You are having a very specific need for your algorithmic trading platform. You are also needing specific skill sets and IT leadership.
How?
We lead and help your current team to develop your trading platform. Make sure they apply best practices and avoid known pitfalls.
Benefits
Even if you don’t have the right tech, your organization can build its own, in-house Trading platform. Additionally, avoid common pitfalls, you will cut off at least 60% of development time.
High Frequency Trading
Building the software infrastructure for high frequency trading is a challenge in itself. Getting the right architecture and resources is key. For more than 10 years, we have been working in high frequency trading shops
How?
Architecting the entire engine utilizing our own architectural design, and in some cases, 3rd party libraries to speed up the development cost – without losing the speed advantage-
Reaching under 10 microseconds tick-to-trade engines.
Benefits
By using our advice and guidance, customers achieved under 10 microseconds tick-to-trade speeds. Save 60% of the development cost by taking the right decisions and building your in-house high frequency trading system.
What is the process?
Pricing
By using our advice and guidance, customers save 60% of their development costs. Taking the right decisions and avoiding common pitfalls. We will help you stay within the industry’s best practices and have all the technical processes covered.
We plan, maintain, optimize, and track deployments, timelines, and project lifecycles. Defining KPI and performance checks for the technology set-up for maximum value on investment.
Our strong experience in the financial industry will allow you to gain a competitive advantage over your competitors.
By choosing our expert Advisory services, you will be able to streamline your electronic trading operations and achieve optimal performance. We will guide you through industry best practices and help you avoid common pitfalls.
With our help, you can expect to see a significant improvement in the speed and efficiency of your trades, leading to higher profits and better returns on investment. Our focus on high-performance computing systems and real-time data processing will give you a competitive edge in a fast-paced and constantly evolving market.
By partnering with us, you can rest assured that your technology setup will be well-defined, maintained, optimized and tracked for maximum value and performance.
We build real-time order management systems (OMS) and order blotters to manage all your order activity and the associated data.
Additionally, we also provide Smart Order Routing (SOR) solutions to increase execution efficiency and lowering the market impact.
BACKTESTING
We provide framework solutions so you can backtest your trading ideas in any market. From equities, foreign exchange, futures, and any derivative markets, we provide a robust toolset that will allow your researching team to work more efficiently.
Price Aggregators
High Performance Price Aggregation.
Aggregates real-time quotes from multiple liquidity providers.
Sends orders to appropriate liquidity providers by order router management system.
Monitors merged quotes and manages multiple accounts simultaneously.
CASE STUDIES
Quant trading firm needed advisory on their HFT development
Chicago-based group of quantitative proprietary trading firms specializing in global derivatives needed guidance and advisory for their engineers. They were able to cut development efforts by 60%.
Top Crypto liquidity provider built their specialized US-based team
One of the top 10 liquidity providers in the major crypto exchanges, headquartered in Hong Kong needed a technical head and a specialized team for their US operations.
Prop trading firm looking to upgrade, learn and build their own HFT
Australian proprietary trading firm looking to upgrade, learn and build their own high-speed trading system to operate with the CME futures markets.
Fintech Startup CTO gave 1 month leave notice
A fintech startup that was in its series B funding round, was losing its Chief Technology Officer after he gave them one month’s notice.
Fintech saved +60% on their overall budget
A lead fintech that provides CRM tools for the “Merchant Cash Advance” industry, was growing rapidly year after year, and with that its demand for its software.
Hedge Fund startup to setup their HFT electronic trading
Two former executives from a recognized bank decided to start a new Hedge Fund that traded electronically on the forex and futures market. 100% focused on high frequency trading.
HFT startup running operations on outdated systems.
South Florida hedge fund startup doing HFT operations and electronic trading into the institutional forex market. We came on board to do an overview analysis of their operations.
Renowned investment bank needed work on their RMS
An investment bank with headquarters in NYC needed additional help with their Risk Management Systems and the integration with their OMS
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Frequently Asked Question
These are a compilation of used questions received. Let us know if you have any question not listed here.
What does an Electronic Trading Advisory do?
An Electronic Trading Advisory advises clients on how to best use information technology (IT) practices to achieve their specific business objectives. In order to best optimize a client’s IT resources and practices, a technology consultant would also manage and implement strategies.
Is this Service for me?
Are you looking to optimize internal inefficiencies? As your Advisor, we have a unique understanding of the workings of the internal tech environment, and highlights underperforming areas.
Product development is not going as planned? Quality issues, delivery dates missed, lack of features, etc.
Your current tech team is (or soon will be) no longer in the picture and you need someone to keep things going until you can hire the replacement.
You are building a quantitative fund, and need advisory with the technology part.
Your current operation is already using Electronic Trading, and you have different issues (execution, slippage, misses, etc)
You want to coach and advise your current team to follow the best practices.
You are on the Buy-side and need to implement new processes for your strategies.
You are on the Sell-side and must improve latencies in order to be competitive.
What is the approach taken?
Whether you need senior leadership consulting or project-based executive expertise, our retained Advisors can provide technology-centered leadership needed to match business strategies with technology architectures.
We provide consulting and advisory services across a multitude of modern technology solutions and service requirements such as cloud hosting, software as a service (SaaS), software development, on-site and offshore team management, and more.
What are the best practices when designing HFT systems?
Depending on different factors, markets, and compliances, this may vary, but some basics will remain the same for any trading system.
The key factor here is being able to handle a big amount of incoming information, response time to external events, internal response time, and capabilities to provide the highest throughput and lowest latency.
These are the usual challenges:
The system must be able to handle multiple strategies, making sure that the system will not underperform as we add more strategies.
Order book reconstruction from different venues. If we take as an example like the forex market, there are tons of different venues and ECNs, all of them using different API and connectivity standards. The system must be able to handle those different sources and aggregate them into an internal and well-defined data structure.
Is implementation included in this service?
No. However, whatever the plan is, we can setup a specialized team to perform the implementation.
How can you help us with the hiring process?
We have a global network of specialized resources and consultants, and we can make sure the team we put together is the best fit for the project.
How the onboarding process looks like?
Capture of Business operations, culture and goals.
Identification of bottlenecks and improvements to be made
Draft of a plan and adjustments
Team setup and definition of procedures
Managing the implementation
Handling project budget and resources towards the final goal
Maintenance, support and constant improvements
How many people work in the company?
We have a core of 3 senior consultants and a much wider reach of associates in their fields. Therefore, we ensure all the consultants working for us have had experience in a senior role within the industry to achieve this.
We widen our reach to the US and Asia too through partnerships with agencies specializing in this niche.
Is this service suitable for startups?
Absolutely. For any startup starting a business in any electronic trading field, whether within the buy-side or sell-side, or just a small hedge fund, we can certainly give you the know-how of the technology part.
We encourage startups to work with us and avoid common pitfalls that most encounter in these areas. In the end, you will save money and most importantly, time.
How much money would it cost to setup high-frequency trading?
You will need the following:
Quality Data sources
Collocated Servers
Software: platforms and execution
People and resources
Brokers
For more information, you can read our complete report here.
Can you help us to build our own trading platform
Absolutely yes. You can leverage our +10 years of building the most high-performing trading platforms and build your own, in-house system.
We advise from the initial designs to its implementation.
We manage the project with your own in-house or outsourced team.
You keep the entire intellectual property (IP) of the project.
How you help to reach our business goals?
Being one of the experienced technology consulting companies, we offer you access to executive-level technology expertise and on-demand full-time resources on a wide range of technologies and digital platforms.
The Advisory program is a unique offering where experienced technology experts chosen explicitly for your business needs work with you to ease and support IT and development initiatives, outline tech strategies and approaches according to business goals, and manage technology infrastructure, tools, and teams. The technology expert works with you to support as a consultant and is accessible in your time zone, on your preferred communication channels, and in your office on-demand.
WHAT ELSE WE PROVIDE?
Learn more about what else we can do for your organization.
Our custom made HFT Low Latency Platform
A low latency platform with the best performance and fully customizable will allow any Electronic Trading operation to run with a clear edge over competitors.
Our unique and proprietary system architecture allows for achieving the lowest latencies in the market, offering integration with different open-source solutions, and allowing us to provide the best-in-class institutional trading platform.
We cover the latest articles related to finance and technology in the electronic trading field.
You will find articles that talk about: HFT Infrastructure, Electronic trading, High-Frequency Trading, Quantitative Finance, and news on corporate events.
An investment bank with headquarters in NYC needed additional help with their Risk Management Systems and the integration with their OMS.
The Problem(s)
Running under a microservice architecture, their entire RMS needed to add new features and speed improvements. By the amount of data used by their traders, the system was lagging and unable to report in real-time. Besides, they needed to improve the interaction with current Order Management Systems (OMS) and Execution Management Systems (EMS).
Solution
Migration of some of their microservices to an up-to-date technology for better performance and maintenance. In the end, they saved more than 20% of their current budget just because of that.
Refactoring services to improve initial loading times, and incorporating resilience techniques to make them have high availability. Improve overall performance by 40%
HFT startup running operations on outdated systems.
HFT eFX forex algorithmic trading
South Florida hedge fund startup doing HFT operations and electronic trading into the institutional forex market. We came on board to do an overview analysis of their operations.
The Problem(s)
They were working with outdated technology and were proven that their high transaction costs (TCA) were because of a lack of latencies issues (network latency + system latencies). Analytics was showing issues in speed and wrong risk management actions. Additionally, their current connectivity to more than 30 different FX venues was poorly used and the data stream not performing.
Solution
Updated their systems, all from scratch, with a lightweight – high-speed trading system, and incorporated their improved strategies: market-making and hedging with different approaches.
Hedge Fund startup to setup their HFT electronic trading
Two former executives from a recognized bank decided to start a new Hedge Fund that traded electronically on the forex and futures market. They wanted to build their own electronic trading platform and be able to achieve the best low latency execution in the market.
Their goal was to setup a state-of-the-art High Frequency Trading desk, and they needed a heavy technological partner to start their operations.
Initial Goal
Research on the current providers in this field to leverage our starting up time.
Setup top team with a quantitative background
Define the roadmap
Establish a bold technical leadership
Problem(s)
They had an endless variety of providers. We needed to choose the best in order to stay competitive.
Lack of human resources
Zero margins for miss-steps or errors
Solution
Found reliable providers in the hedge fund industry and got a great initial deal.
Recruited and hire top professionals: 2 quants, 1 researcher, 1 network support, FPGA support)
Designed the procedures and plan for the next year
Created a toolset that gave a comfortable framework to generate trading ideas.
Prop trading firm looking to upgrade, learn and build their own HFT
Australian proprietary trading firm looking to upgrade, learn and build their own high-speed trading system to operate with the CME futures markets.
The Problem(s)
They lack the knowledge on how to architect, build, and setup a truly HFT trading system. Their actual system were having a tick-to-trade of +50 microseconds. That was giving them very bad queue positions in their executions.
Solution
Guidance through the entire process of creating a high-performing trading system, from architecting the system, allowing them to achieve under 3 microseconds. Helping to hire a team member specialized in “profiling” low latency systems and making constant and recurrent improvements as the system grows.
Top Crypto liquidity provider built their specialized US-based team
One of the top 10 liquidity providers in the major crypto exchanges, headquartered in Hong Kong needed a technical head and a specialized team for their US operations.
The Problem(s)
Expand their business of providing liquidity into all major US-based exchanges, having a dedicated Business Unit to deal with local exchanges, and clients.
Solution
Hiring representatives, to deal with local exchanges, negotiate rates and at the same time, deal with local institutions to provide liquidity in the crypto market. Build a technical team to develop special access to the local exchanges and their technologies.
Chicago-based group of quantitative proprietary trading firm specializing in global derivatives.
The Problem(s)
Lack of leadership to build their low latency system. Their engineers need guidance for such systems to achieve a competitive operation.
Solution
Guided their engineers to architect the system, and advice on best practices to avoid future pitfalls and problems related to connectivity and latencies. Put their engineers right on track to achieve the goal of having a leading low latency system. They were able to cut development time by 60%.
User Interfaces - GUI
VisualHFT
GUI for enterprise-level high-frequency trading systems, making focus on visualizing market microstructure analytics, such as Limit Order Book dynamic, latencies, execution quality, and other analytics.
It also allows making adjustments to the strategies and models on the go, panic switch, and liquidation button for emergencies.
VisualHFT GUI for enterprise level high frequency trading systems, making focuses on visualizing market microstructure analytics, such Limit Order Book dynamic, latencies, execution quality, and other analytics.
We also have integrated the best-known trading interface into our systems to allow clients to use a fully complete and scalable solution,
For that reason, we choose “Reactive Trader” to be the perfect companion for our platform.
Reactive Trader is the best open-source GUI, from Reactive Trader, with capabilities to run on any platform, on-premises, and with the best technology.
Trading Monitoring GUI Active trader | Interface Trading Platform
Reactive Trader Features
A real-time architecture, both event-driven and fully resilient
Price streaming, RFQ submission, trade execution, and analytics
An intuitive User Experience (UX), with a consistent style across multiple devices
Intelligent Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Support for multiple desktop container and interoperability platforms
Built on React, React-RxJS, Node.js and Adaptive’s Hydra platform
Support both on-prem or cloud, using GCP, Docker and Kubernetes
A lead fintech that provides CRM tools for the “Merchant Cash Advance” industry, was growing rapidly year after year, and with that its demand for its software.
Their incapacity to scale up and lack of technical management was their main problem.
Initial Goal
Learn about the company’s goals planned for the next 6-12-36 months
Understand current team configurations.
Set a new plan for the future.
The Problem(s)
They were hiring new developers without having a clear path.
Most of their employees have no experience in the fintech industry.
Under-utilized their cloud services, hence spending more than expected.
No processes nor methodologies in place
The software was built under a poor architectural foundation, hence, no room to scaling up.
Total lack of technical leadership
Solution
First, we defined the goals and build a solid and realistic plan for the next year
Over the next 6 months, we restructured the whole team, and we build a solid offshore development team, saving more than 60% on what they were already spending
Designed a solid “SDLC” methodology using the best practices (Requirements → Prototyping → Development → Testing → Maintenance)
Created automated testing methodologies
Helped to reduce their bugs by a 90%
Speeded up their delivery process by a 70%
Fintech Startup CTO gave 1 month leave notice
A fintech startup that was in its series B funding round, was losing its Chief Technology Officer after he gave them one month’s notice.
The Managing Partners contacted us to validate the different options they had to handle the transition.
Initial goal
Evaluate the current situation
Knowledge transfer
Set foundations for a new in-house CTO
The Problem(s)
Our initial findings were astonishing: the outgoing CTO was the only one who knew certain parts of the system and setups. Very common, particularly on startups with small teams.
We have found that there were no clear goals, and the development team was working on ad-hoc mode, as issues and bugs popped out.
The technical leadership was unclear.
Solution
Have meetings with the outgoing CTO to recount all the different company’s technical aspects and allow us to find out how they are organized.
Based on that, and after the approval of the management, and in the fintech startup industry, we designed two different plans with different goals: long term and short term.
Long term plan: re-arrange the team and help to hire additional people making sure everything is aligned with the plan. We define KPI’s for each role in the company for easy follow up. We also suggested different providers, that ended up reducing their overall budget.
Short term plan: find the perfect replacement for the CTO role. Make sure that the person will have a good affinity with the company’s culture. Have the field prepared with a plan in place.
