ED&F Man Capital Markets is a global financial brokerage business and the financial services division of ED&F Man. To learn more, visit our website - http://www.edfmancapital.com/infrastructure/corporate-information/news/

1. ED&F MAN CAPITAL MARKETS
HOSTING AND INFRASTRUCTURE
THE BASICS OF
LOW-LATENCY OPTIMIZATION
FOR TRADERS

2. 01ED&F Man Capital Markets Hosting & Infrastructure Services
TIME IS MONEY – LOW-LATENCY
OPTIMIZATION FOR TRADERS
In electronic trading, how fast you are to the market
only matters in relation to how fast everyone else is –
the first in line gets what they want! The time it takes
for a trader to receive the price is as important as
the time it takes for the order to be delivered. The
time to market is measured in milli-, micro-, and
nanoseconds.
The path between an execution platform and an
Exchange’s matching engine is made up of many
layers of hardware infrastructure and network
connectivity. In order to understand how to make
this path shorter, each layer needs to be reviewed
and understood together with how much it costs to
optimize, both in terms of time and money - the goal
is to get as close to the market as possible by
eliminating as many hops in the middle of the path.
There are a number of factors that can impact the
time it takes for order messages and price data to
move in-between an electronic trading platform and
a Financial Exchange’s matching engine; the path
between the two is made up of six layers:
• Execution Platform
• Operating System
• Computer Hardware
• Local Network Infrastructure
• Wide Area Network
• Exchange Matching Engine
Each one of these layers presents its own
challenges and set of factors that need to be taken
into account; each requires a unique skillset.
The proximity hosting services provided by ED&F
Man Capital Markets are backed by an experienced
application support team with experts in network
design, server configuration and deployment,
exchange interfaces, market data services,
low-latency optimization and industry standard as
well as proprietary trading platforms all backed by
an enterprise level of IT and Trading support. By
combining all of these elements in a single place,
we enable our clients to harness all elements of the
low-latency optimization path.

3. 02ED&F Man Capital Markets Hosting & Infrastructure Services
PRICE
DATA
Trading Application
Operating System
Local Network
InfrastructureWide Area Network
Exchange Matching Engine
Computer Hardware
ORDER
TRAFFIC

4. 03ED&F Man Capital Markets Hosting & Infrastructure Services
Choice of a third party platform for low-latency
trading depends widely on the structure and
markets of a particular trade.
EXECUTION
PLATFORM
Although the speed at which information can be
received and decisions made can be optimized, the
distance that signals must travel can introduce
significant delays, to which the only solution is to
ensure that your servers are as close to the market
exchange as possible.
EXCHANGE
MATCHING ENGINE
CLICK HERE
to download the White Paper or contact the ED&F Man Capital Markets Hosting &
Infrastructure services team.