Trading Technologies (TT), on August 13 2019, had a major connection outage at a global level. Beginning at 8:30 AM CT, order routing to CME from TT was interrupted for all users as a result of problems within the TT infrastructure. This continued intermittently over the following two hours. For 2 hours, their connection wasn't restored because of which many traders got their orders filled and were left helpless since they couldn't do anything but watch their positions and P/L Statement getting hammered. I was one of the affected traders who lost US$50,000, because TT, who takes an exorbitant monthly cost, couldn't do its job properly. My parent orders were filled because they were converted to limit orders when the outage happened and no hedge orders could be deployed by the system. With more than 150 orders (mostly very safe ADL and Autospreader orders) deployed in the markets, and only 10% (14 orders were filled to be exact) filled, my career could have easily ended because of a very clear negligence and carelessness by TT, a software which claims itself to have an award winning unmatched power and speed. This wasn't the first time when this happened. It has happened on numerous occasions. I vividly remember one such instance. On 27th March 2019, a similar thing happened in Euribor and traders in my company lost a considerable amount of money because of TT. Four months and a higher level of callousness later, on August 13 2019, another outage happened and on a much bigger scale. TT has accepted its mistakes and has written an apology note regarding what had happened. However, it's too late to apologize now. They should have apologized when this happened for the first time and should have worked on the solution. A mere apology shouldn't be their way out this time. TT should take responsibility by reimbursing the losses that traders incurred because of no fault of theirs. A trading platform's most basic function is to provide a connection between a trader and the exchange. And, if it is not able to do so on so many occasions, then it's a big question on whether the software (NewTT) is reliable and sustainable. And, in my honest opinion, NewTT is no longer a reliable trading software.
I understand you're just venting, but realistically no software platform and network of TT's caliber is ever going to have a perfect track record of 100% uptime. Anyone who's been trading for a while has experienced a malfunction, outage, or crash at some point regardless of the platform being used. It's just an unavoidable risk factor when trading markets remotely over a network.
It is extremely unfortunate when this happens and I truly understand the pain. I advise every single trader to have the number of the trading desk handy to try and minimize the damage, call your broker, or whatever is necessary to flatten positions.
The best of best trading platform will have outrage problem. No point getting frustrated over it. Always have backup computer, backup ISP, backup trading platform. And if all these don't help, just have to quit trading for a while.
I totally agree with what you said Mr. Baron. No software can be up 100% of the time. But this has been happening too often with NewTT (thrice in 7 months) and that frequency is actually very alarming.
pragunameriya33, I too am sorry you had this issue, but it can happen to any software. In the future, I suggest you create a Firmsoft login at the CME. With this, you would be able to cancel open orders yourself and view open and filled orders. I have never used it but this is what it is for. Then you can phone in orders to your FCM to offset position. https://www.cmegroup.com/education/videos/firmsoft-overview-video.html Bob
Excellent point! You just have to be sure that any cancellation of orders on Firmsoft has to be matched on the trading platform as well.
Then what was the issue. If you had some kind monitoring on, you would know quickly and then close positions. Any technology can fail. But totally agree 3 outages like this is unacceptable.