Managing the Performance of Financial Trading Applications

Time Is Money
By NetQoS

Published 2008, Posted June 2008

Abstract:

With trillions of dollars traded annually on the NASDAQ alone, financial services companies are investing heavily in optimizing their electronic trading infrastructure and providing nearly instantaneous access to the latest market data. The widespread adoption of electronic trading has spurred many global IT initiatives to reduce application latency to extremely low levels. Put simply, a one-millisecond advantage can be worth millions. Acquiring and sustaining this advantage has created a fiercely competitive landscape, where financial services companies must keep a watchful eye on their trading infrastructure. Alongside competitive advantage, regulatory initiatives are also forcing trading services to provide market access in a timely manner. Now more than ever, financial services companies need the right solutions to manage the delivery of their trading applications.

The financial services industry has standardized on a communication protocol for financial trading applications called Financial Information eXchange (FIX). For the trade desk, managing application delivery requires an understanding of the FIX protocol; however, many financial services companies are not equipped with the right solutions to monitor and troubleshoot FIX applications. Solutions that provide visibility into network traffic, hop by hop latency, data center application performance, and retrospective analysis of FIX traffic can provide the needed insight. Without these solutions, financial services companies are left in the dark when they need to validate low-latency trade execution.