Steve Toland, TransFICC
Online game ‘Fortnite’, Netflix and Spotify will drive technological advances in e-trading, Steve Toland, founder of TransFICC, told delegates at the Fixed Income Leaders Summit this week.
Toland said the tech used by the gaming and online video and music streaming industries was relevant to the development of e-trading systems for fixed income traders.
“Fortnite has different players competing against each other in real time all over the world. If one player is milliseconds behind another, they will be at a competitive disadvantage which is not unlike traders competing for the same prices on central markets,” Toland said.
The 2019 Global Internet Phenomena report published by Sandvine, found Netflix accounted for 12.6% of total downstream volume of traffic across the entire internet and has a presence in 190 countries servicing 155 million customers. Toland argued that fixed income traders needed access to the same level of service afforded to the biggest streaming services if they are to compete on the global digital stage.
“How did Netflix get to 190 countries? It uses Amazon Web Services which is cloud computing technology. This gives them the ability to send information in real time to the cloud as demand comes in, which is how Fortnite was able to grow from zero to 10 million users in one month.”
Toland said e-trading would need to emulate the gaming and streaming companies in employing small, co-located teams of developers who were expected to regularly release new technology.
“Co-located engineers working closely together to develop proprietary systems is the most effective way to work,” Toland said.
Finally, Toland said traders should ask how developers are organised; what open source technology is used; what is the plan to migrate to the cloud; is an automated testing approach in place; how often the developers release to production and whether regulatory issues were considered during the build.
©The DESK 2019
