Challenges
Being at the forefront of quantitative finance presents many unique challenges. The key technological problems lie in storing overwhelming amounts of data, processing that data quickly, and being agile in an extremely dynamic industry.
We must accumulate, aggregate, and analyze data from many disparate, geographically-distributed sources. Furthermore, the quantity of data is growing at tremendous rates. Whereas we used to store about one gigabyte per day, we now store well beyond ten! This is both a function of Athena expanding into new markets, as well as the tremendous growth of electronic trading in our existing markets.
Speed is critical to real-time trading. With so much data and so many ways to use it, we constantly strive to find solutions to move and process data faster. The obvious tactic of throwing money at the problem – buying fast connections and powerful computers – will only get us so far. We have achieved excellent performance using clusters of computers working together in concert powered by well-designed software.
The quantitative financial industry is ever-changing. Even in the last two years have seen major shifts in the key players and their technology platforms. Similarly, many new trading opportunities have arisen. In order to remain competitive, we must design our systems to be flexible and agile. The ability to research new ideas and adapt to changing environments is critical to our success. .
We must accumulate, aggregate, and analyze data from many disparate, geographically-distributed sources. Furthermore, the quantity of data is growing at tremendous rates. Whereas we used to store about one gigabyte per day, we now store well beyond ten! This is both a function of Athena expanding into new markets, as well as the tremendous growth of electronic trading in our existing markets.
Speed is critical to real-time trading. With so much data and so many ways to use it, we constantly strive to find solutions to move and process data faster. The obvious tactic of throwing money at the problem – buying fast connections and powerful computers – will only get us so far. We have achieved excellent performance using clusters of computers working together in concert powered by well-designed software.
The quantitative financial industry is ever-changing. Even in the last two years have seen major shifts in the key players and their technology platforms. Similarly, many new trading opportunities have arisen. In order to remain competitive, we must design our systems to be flexible and agile. The ability to research new ideas and adapt to changing environments is critical to our success. .