VitalVest launches hedge fund middle-office solutions

VitalVest has unveiled Hedge Fund Middle Office, a suite of operational solutions for hedge funds operating in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Hedge Fund Middle Office includes a range of scalable, modular post-trade and pre-settlement services. The services are global and include technology solutions that help manage daily trade processing and profit-and-loss reporting, over-the-counter confirmation and valuation, collateral management, corporate action processing and cash management.

In addition, the solution allows hedge funds to move to a more variable operational cost model, which VitalVest said is an attractive feature in the current cost-constrained environment.

If you are interested in learning more about middle-office solutions offered by VitalVest, please feel free to email us for more info at info@vitalvest.com

 

Power of CPU, GPU and FPGA for ultimate ultra low latency trading system !

I hear that some Hedge Funds and Institutional Investors are going beyond HFT trading by doing Parallel programming of heterogeneous systems using power of CPU, GPU and FPGA for ultimate ultra low latency trading system. This system enqables them to complete the trading process in couple of micro seconds, till date its the fast system developed by the traders. The more faster the system gets, it can generate more trades in a day thus generating more revenue for the company, I guess thats the reason we see market wide fluctuation now a days. While SEC and FINRA are working hard investigating suspicious market activity and demading secret high-frequency trading computer codes from HFT trading firms, Hedge Funds, Institutional Investors and other HFT trading firms worldwide are busy developing robust trading system that does not care about company’s fundamentals, it just does trade exclusively on down ticks and up ticks. The Novel System is designed to make a penny of profit but with several millions of trades per terminal and 100′s of  such HFT Algos/Codes systems worldwide… It’s your Guess!

Will you hand over your secret high-frequency trading codes to SEC & FINRA?

U.S. securities regulators have taken the unprecedented step of asking high-frequency trading firms to hand over the details of their trading strategies, and in some cases, their secret computer codes.

 

The requests for proprietary code and algorithm parameters by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a Wall Street brokerage regulator, are part of investigations into suspicious market activity, said Tom Gira, executive vice president of FINRA’s market regulation unit.

“It’s not a fishing expedition or educational exercise. It’s because there’s something that’s troubling us in the marketplace,” he said in an interview.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, meanwhile, has also begun making requests for proprietary algorithmic trading data as part of its authority to examine financial firms for compliance with U.S. regulations, according to agency officials and outside lawyers.

The requests by SEC examiners are not necessarily related to any suspicions of specific wrong-doing, although the decision to ask for it can be triggered by a tip, complaint or referral.

According to interviews with attorneys, traders, industry executives and regulators, the unusual requests for algo code and other computerized trading strategies really ramped up this year and have targeted stock-trading firms such as broker dealers and hedge funds.

It has alarmed some traders who are afraid their “secret sauce” — intellectual property sometimes developed over years and at great cost — could get into the wrong hands, especially when SEC and FINRA examiners leave for the private sector.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/01/us-financial-regulation-algos-idUSTRE7806J420110901

GPU (CUDA) supercomputing technologies for real-time financial trading and risk

First it was FPGA technology now its time for (GPU programming / high performance computing HPC) Graphical Processing Unit  supercomputing technologies. GPU supercomputing is perfect for Trading Systems for its ability to speed up many types of financial calculations. GPU (CUDA) supercomputing technologies has  made significant inroads into financial analytics and risk arena what looks like a silent revolution on Wall Street. Only Institutional  Banks / Hedge Funds with financial capability and  technology knowhow are currently using GPU (CUDA) supercomputing technologies for real-time financial trading and risk.

The power of high speed GPU programming gives traders ability to  trades almost in real-time, thus it pays to be there first and ahead of the trading game. For more info on GPU/CUDA computing please visit Nvidia’s developer zone

Will FPGA & GPU technologies live the hype in finance? So, what can GPUs do now and in future as a trading technology? And where do we go from here?

Oracle’s Java for Trading Systems Development, Speed and Performance?

After Sun its Oracle turn to try out novel development using Java.

Oracle is focusing on building a Java-based pre-engineered trading bundle this year in order to facilitate fast deployment and “fewer moving parts” to deal with for its customers. This development is aimed at tackling the challenge of performance versus time to market in the low latency trading architecture space. It would be based on Java enabled data grids and architectures on which trading infrastructures can be built could therefore provide more robust capabilities.

We will find our more about core Java-based pre-engineered trading bundle within months to come. Will be easier to implement and will it save time and money for both the software company/consultants and the users (Trading firms and its Customers, Capital Markets & Investment Banks).???

Java is HOT again!

Future trends and technology investment for High Speed and Secure Trading System!

The financial services industry has changed drastically and evolved greatly owing to the economic crisis,
regulatory issues, competitive pressures and increasing customer needs. Today, IT plays a significant role
as a major operative and competitive requirement for financial institutions. Thus changing the future trends
and technology investment in Mobile Trading applications and High frequency trading (HFT)/ Algorithmic trading
(Algo trading)
Here are few technology trends or recommended improvements every investment bank must take note of :

Faster and better and mobile electronic trading systems will continue increased IT spending
Increased focus on electronic trading, including Ultra lower latency, co-location and access to new electronic
trading venues like mobile trading and direct data feeds from exchanges
Increased spending on derivative trading systems, both for ETD and OTC :
Both ETD and OTC derivatives will see an increase in volume; and with new rules (dodd frank bill) requiring
OTC products to move onto exchanges, with CCPs acting as clearers, new systems will have to be put
into place to manage the required collateral and margin.
Firms will have to invest in upgrading their risk management system :
Increased trading volumes, faster trading, more diverse types of securities traded, and new margining
and collateral rules will require that firms have capable risk management systems
Improving front-office, middle office and back office system capabilities
Firms will continue their perennial struggle to improve their middle and back office systems in order to
keep up with the ever increasing amount of trade volume – driven higher more quickly by the increase in
electronic trading systems. Wealth management firms will focus on upgrading advisor workstations and facilitating
customer communication
A focus on integration of multi-platform
New trend is to work off a single platform across the enterprise. Wealth management firms will continue to
focus on process and data integration.

FPGA technology into the ultra low latency space. The Next Wave of HFT Technology?

Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology continues to gain momentum in Stock Trading for Ultra low latency connectivity and high-frequency trading (HFT) solutions. This new technology invented by Xilinx,  have gone from being simple glue logic chips to actually replacing custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and processors for signal processing and control applications. Because FPGAs run as an electrical circuit, they are configured with special programming languages known as Hardware Description Languages (HDL) such as VHDL and Verilog.  These languages are not as low level as assembly language but one does have to have deeper knowledge of the target hardware.

Xilinx and Altera are the two biggest manufacturers followed by Lattice, Actel, Quicklogic, SiliconBlue, Achronix, Tabula, and Tier Logic.  FPGAs vary in application, power consumption, and interfacing to standard buses to name a few.

Do you think this Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) in future will replace the existing trading system and become Next Wave of  high-frequency trading (HFT) Technology?