The following was originally published on Trading Technologies Trade Talk blog. Next-Generation Market Access by Drew Shields, CTO In my last post, I described the FIX solution provided by TT as “FIX-as-a-service” (FaaS). Indeed, one of the differentiators of TT is that it is a suite of professional trading services delivered using the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model: services that are available from anywhere, on demand, without the need for any pre-allocation of infrastructure or deployment of software. This is what makes our FIX offering compelling (along with the performance improvements we’ve made along the way), but FaaS is a launching point for two other services that separate TT from the typical “off-the-shelf” trading system: market access and compliance/data-retention. In this post, I’ll focus on the former, and in a third and final post in this little trilogy, I’ll discuss how to leverage TT for compliance and data retention—even if we aren’t your execution platform. In a world where margins are shrinking, providing market access is becoming increasingly difficult due to the significant capital investment required and the overhead of maintaining exchange gateway software, physical infrastructure, and networking while also providing for high availability and disaster recovery. As a result, banks, brokers and FCMs are rethinking how they provide this service to a broad range of customers. This is where TT can step in. Obviously anyone using the TT user interface and suite of automated trading tools for execution is leveraging our market access by default, but by providing FaaS, we have created a way for market access providers to transform the way they deliver access to markets. Without investment in infrastructure, these firms can now enable markets for their customers as easily as pointing FIX applications at our flexible infrastructure: no servers to buy and manage, no need to manage failover and disaster recovery, no need to employ a team of people maintaining exchange gateways. In that sense, then, a natural extension of FaaS is what we’re calling “Market-Access-as-a-Service.” Traditionally, adding a new market can take months (even with hosted solutions) because of the time required for our clients to acquire hardware or bandwidth, test the new gateway, and deploy and configure the software. With TT, the game has changed. You can add a new market one of two simple ways. If you already have order routing credentials for a given market, you simply log in to the Setup application, click Connections on the left, and then click New Connection and choose the market you need to add. After entering your market-specific connection information and saving, your session will automatically be available for order routing in a few seconds. Just like with FIX sessions on TT, there’s no need to wait for a maintenance window for a new exchange session to become available, nor do you need to call TT Support to get help adding a market. After the connection is saved, you assign the connection to the trading accounts for which it was intended, and your users can begin trading immediately without needing to restart, refresh or pause trading at all. If you rely on another broker to provide you access to a market, you would have that partner execute the process defined in (1), and then they would share that connection or an omnibus account with your company in the Setup application. From there, you would ensure that the trading accounts which should have access to the new market are assigned to the shared connection or are sub-accounts created under the shared account, and again, immediately your users can begin trading. Assuming you or your partner/carry-broker have credentials for a market, the bottom line is that adding that market on TT and offering it to any and all of your customers takes just seconds. On the back end, the same basic approach I described for providing high availability and disaster recovery for FIX services is deployed for pre-trade risk and exchange gateways. These services are clustered and load balanced and session state is shared in a globally distributed database cluster so that if an exchange gateway or pre-trade risk service were to suffer some kind of failure, the other members of the cluster can immediately pick up where the failed instance left off without any human intervention. This also means that our customers don’t need to maintain multiple sets of credentials on each market for which they provide access. Instead, in the event that a disaster recovery plan must be executed, the services running in the secondary data center can pick up right where the primary services left off because they have access to the same globally distributed database. In some cases where markets are charging per session/connection, this means real savings for our customers who are providing market access. Trading Technologies has always been known for our user interface. Over time, we also developed a reputation for delivering easy-to-use yet high-performing automated trading tools like Autospreader® and ADL®. We are committed to maintaining our market-leading position in those areas of functionality, but with our global, co-located infrastructure, the flexibility we’ve introduced with FaaS and the ease with which a firm can add and maintain markets for their customers, we believe we are uniquely suited to become a leading provider of market access in partnership with banks, brokers and FCMs globally. It’s worth mentioning that not only have we made adding and maintaining market support as simple and cost effective for our bank, broker and FCM partners, we are also actively working to expand the number of markets included in TT in 2017 and beyond. We just recently added Dubai and are working on plans for many others including South Africa, Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, India, Warsaw, Athens and more. In coming weeks, I will post the final installment in this series covering how FaaS can also provide access to the unique data retention capabilities of TT.
What does this marketing gibberish even mean? Has TT fallen on hard times that they need to grease and lube the ET engine like this? Market access with a few mouse clicks? Lol yeah, that's been like this for years with my and a number other brokers. You just expressed it in slick salesmanship terminology. What are you honestly trying to achieve here? I don't think most anyone understands what you are talking about and I wrote FIX parsers and don't get it either. If you look to come across as this slick routing and top technology stack house rather than the mundane front ui app developer then well, you succeeded. But I find nothing of what you described innovative or new at all. Routed Fix? You are defeating the whole point of Fix. Market access in a few mouse clicks? Existing for years. By the way when margins are shrinking things usually get cheaper and not more expensive. Why are you guys raising prices across the board? And why no transparent pricing? Price discrimination? Sorry maybe I come across as overly critical but it's hard to understand even as market professional the exact product you are selling. It comes across as a huge plate of meaty, sausagy, sauerkraut, sort of mixture all covered by a thick layer of gravy. What are we supposed to be fed here?
zzz1, apparently my writing really strikes a bad chord with you. Two blogs in a row have solicited fairly aggressive responses. Regarding pricing, I'm not sure how much more transparent you need us to be than this... https://www.tradingtechnologies.com/platforms/pricing/ and https://www.tradingtechnologies.com/platforms/pricing/ttcontractpricing/. You accuse us of price discrimination yet we publish pricing for all to see. Rather than address your critiques point by point I will simply provide an example of my claim that the ease with which one can add market access on TT is unique... We have users who clear through a tier 2 broker. The broker provides access across many markets globally, but not all of those which the traders would like to use and TT does indeed support. -- On our legacy platform (and every other off-the-shelf trading system I'm aware brokers are using), if our end-users want to add one of those markets which we support but the broker does not, the broker will have to acquire data center space, exchange connectivity, and physical servers. They will likely pass all those costs on to the traders. Not only is that a time-consuming process, it also creates a very large barrier to entry because many 1-5 person trading groups can't cover the cost of being the first on a new market at their broker. -- On TT, as I describe in plain English in the blog, this multi-week, infrastructure-heavy process is completely eliminated. When the broker wants to add a new market, they simply do so in the admin UI with a few clicks and the session is immediately up and running on clustered gateways. No infrastructure cost, no connectivity costs, no purchase orders for servers, and no waiting on anyone else. Brokers can add markets, and additional sessions on existing markets, at will with no time or infra constraints. Hopefully that clears things up. While what I described may not be meaningful to you, for the brokers we work with (which is essentially every one in the industry), adding new markets is painful and costly. I'm confident that for them, my blog was at least understandable if not even mildly interesting, even if you find it to be something else entirely.
Also, all you linked to are the end user fees to use your trading frontend and some broker/for fees to connect to exchanges. Where are all the fees charged for your technology solutions? Routed fix?straight fix? Storage facilities? Cross connect fees and other technology "inmovations" you have so far been talking about? You also showed off your connectivity acumen. What about Thailand, Indonesia Philippines, Turkey, China? What about a number other relevant European futures exchanges such as Greece that do matter a lot due to the ongoing European financial crisis. I simply question the degree of your product range and connectivity. At least its nowhere to be found on your linked websites (unless it's hidden from plain sight) . Many brokers provide access to CME and a few European exchanges and Singapore and Australia, that covers maybe some of the major markets, though not even all, and by far not most of the exchanges on which futures are traded. I simply provide feedback from a critical end user perspective. My impression is that you want to be somewhere else but at the end of the day you still sell your same old frontend that connects to a limited number US centric exchanges, something a lot of brokers nowadays offer. That's not tier 1 in my book.
@Drew Shields, pay @Zzzz1 no mind. He's an admitted failed futures trader. As a result of this, he hates anyone who successfully trades futures or is otherwise affiliated in any way with any type of futures trading. (And he is an unabashed shill for Interactive Brokers.)
Admitted? Failed? Just because you disagree with me gives you the right to dish up lies? Not that I care much what you think of me but my desire for truth and transparency somehow collided with your blatant lies. I. Hope you look at the market in a more honest fashion. Cheers.
Yes, puzzling. If he doesn't like their offerings he shouldn't use them, but to hound them all over ET with insane hostile rants... wtf?
Excuse me, Mr. @Zzzz1, but facts are facts and you are, indeed, a failed and jealous futures trader. To wit: