you simply cannot protect your intellectual property. Being one of a hundred thousand won't help if somebody at your broker is snooping out the accounts with the good returns, they just need hacking skills or a friend at a colo spot...
Ignoring security for IP, can someone recommend good colocation or dedicated server hosting services. Also how much should I expect to pay for this service for a simple 1U rack server? Thanks.
Also can vouch for Steadfast. Reasonable prices for boxes/rack space in 350 E. Cermack. Latency to the Globex matching engines, which are located in the same building, is so low as to be negligible.
My bad - don't know why I said clearing, should have said execution. Since I was being a jerk/rude I suppose I deserve to get flamed for that error. OP - Sorry I was being a dick. Who do you clear through? Are you part of a group/prop firm or are you trading retail/on your own? If you are part of a group just ask them and do what they do, if you are retail/on your own you have two options: 1 - pay for a business class internet line at your house ($200-$500/month) and just run a few boxes out of your house 2 - join a group/prop firm (even as a remote trader you can do this) and more often than not they will give you a box to trade from or at a minimum allow you to plug in one of your computers in their office (which I assume would be in Chicago) and make use of their fast internet, etc.
Colocate with your broker and in their data centers. Checkout Advantage Futures or OEC. You can rent servers from them or ship and supply your own. You get to run local at their speed and have their full support.. all the way to monitoring and executing your strategy if you authorize them. Advantage can assist you with getting your application certified to trade directly with CME. Thats about as good as it gets and reasonably priced if you trade volume. Your strategy code can be compiled and software protected but if your broker wants to trade along they simply mirror your orders. You have many other things to worry about.. don't lose sleep over someone trying to decompile and reverse engineer your code.
lrm & scoobyStoo, can you please indicate how much you pay at Steadfast. I contacted them and their pricing options are mightily confusing! I guess my first question is what services are you using: renting a 1U rack and bringing your own server or using one of their dedicated servers? In general what server specs do you think one needs for an ATS that does not need extreme low latency but for one that wants to ensure that the server is never ever under resource pressure. Also what kind of dedicated Internet bandwith do you need/use? Please give me a sense of your costs and service options. Many thanks.
$200 per month If I was local I'd just rent the rack space and put my own box in but since I'm based in London I went for a dedicated Win2003 box with their basic management services. Forget about latency. You aren't playing in the microsecond HFT space so the latency for any box located in 350 E. Cermack will be negligible. Server spec depends entirely on your strategy implemention. Personally, I run a custom multithreaded .NET app which does a fair amount of number crunching on the arrival of every incoming market data message (both transaction and order book). My Steadfast box is just a standard spec quad core machine with 4GB of RAM. In normal market conditions I am able to process a market data message, submit an order and get the fill report from the exchange in under 10ms. 10 years ago this would have been considered supercomputer performance and now it's available for $200 a month! In abnormal market conditions all bets are off. Fire 10,000 messages a sec at your app for a prolonged period and see if the lag is acceptable. Because these guys primarily supply people running server apps they price their bandwidth in a way which is advantageous for people like us running client apps. Inbound - Unlimited (Great, means I can chew up unfiltered market data without worrying about busting traffic limits) Outbound - 2000GB (I never make even the slightest dent in this)