2012 Review: Firms See the Light—But Not Light-Speed—on Latency

The latency sprint hit a hurdle this year, when firms accustomed to fighting over microseconds began scrutinizing the cost-benefit argument of spending increasing amounts for a shot at being—perhaps briefly—the fastest trader, and decided to settle for “good-enough” speed and the ability to focus their efforts on value-add initiatives.

With the costs involved rising, “people are stepping back... and saying that going from one second to milliseconds wasn’t hard... but going to a microsecond or