I see what you're saying... you're saying that on an md trader window, it looks like the order is resting in the market before it's actually been confirmed by the exchange and that it might be misleading and appear that order entry is faster than it actually is. I guess you're saying that other front ends don't show the order until it's confirmed? Personally i prefer seeing the screen show the order that i just clicked so i get the feedback right away of where i have an order resting, but i understand your point. If I am understanding you correctly then i agree that for a fair comparison it would be better to look at audit trails and compare timestamps if you are trying to compare the speed of two vendor's screens.
You got it. I'm not sure if many systems practice this. I was simply responding to the statement that TT is the fastest. In my experience the ultimate determining factor in speed is your choice of connectivity to the mkt, not the software you use.
i dont get it. how can front end software increase speed of execution? surely the main determinants of execution speed is some thing like the following... exchange platform -> not much we can do, other than decide whether to trade there or not. isp connectivity -> yes, MAJOR factor. dial up is obviously too slow for intra day trading, direct connection (fixed line) the best. broker/clearer server -> we have little say over their technology infrastructure, so we can only vote with our feet/wallet trading workstation -> well i guess optimum memory and processing power is helpful, especially when getting real time data from more than one exchange. at the end of the day though, orders and confirmations are VERY SMALL packets, they are almost insignificant to the average pc these days/ trading software like x trader -> again, i dont really see how a software platform can speed this up. yes, a well designed bit of code, optimized to the hardware chipset will run faster than some average broker-ware written in java and downloaded, but i dont see that any software sitting on the pc will give that much of an edge eg xtrader v abcd so how does x trader increase execution speed?? is it that all orders put through tt sit on some tt server rather than the clearing members server? surely not? i really have no idea (dont use xtrader) please enlighten me. [ps - trader2000 - tt dont claim that 50% of traers use tt, they ESTIMATE that 50% of chicago futures volume is put through their platform - as its only an estimate, its another worthless marketing maneuver]
Some vendors take this approach when sending an order.... client sends order -> centralized server/risk database receives order -> write order info to database -> send order to local exchange gateway server-> send order to actual exchange matching engine-> reverse for round trip. TT does this: client sends order-> local gateway-> exchange-> reverse that middle step of writing to a database and checking with a central server can cost several 100ms which is a big deal if you use automated tools, autospreader or for that matter are racing to hit a bid manually. regarding the volume estimate, it's pretty accurate imho. We'd love to get the info directly from the exchanges but they won't give it to us. You're right to point out the difference between volume and screen mkt share. That was the point of the estimate, large traders use TT.
Fredbloggs-That is my point. A software application sitting on a pc has very little to do with speed of execution. Claiming that any system is the fastest smells like a marketing ploy to me.
Writing to the DB has to happen eventually and probably get's done as part of the transaction (probably queued), otherwise the broker would be in regulatory default. nitro
I agree but it doesn't need to be in the main trader->exchange pipeline slowing things down... You can have a second machine to monitor exchange status messages (like order confirms, fills, etc) and use that to keep your audit trail.
That would require a network sniffer I believe, unless the messages come back multicast. I don't really know the internals of how this works - I thought the messages were just FIX or FIXML. In either case, it greatly complicates the application to get the extra speed. nitro
Every futures exchange has a different setup. Once it hits the TT gateway everything on the client side of that gateway is multicast. (unless you are connecting across the internet)