Hi, I'm an active trader that focuses on equity and vanilla equity derivatives (options, single stock futures, etc.). I recently left the firm I was with and started my own company and now I realize that I know very little to nothing about the back end of trading systems. I need help figuring out what exchange data I should subscribe to as an active trader in US equity and option markets. Some questions I have are: should I get NYSE LvlII and NASDAQ totalview? But wouldn't just one exchange feed provide me with very accurate (less than 1 minute, not necessarily less than 1 mili sec) prices? Should I get CBOE or ARCA feeds? What are other things I should know about data feeds? Thanks.
What exactly are your strategies? You said you trade options and single stock futures which implies a holding period greater than intraday. I am not sure what "active" trader means. My few options positions keep me (excessively) busy. Your concern over granular feeds implies you are doing major size. Perhaps, you broker's avaliable algos and back office automation is a bigger concern.