Opening Cross: Innovation Isn’t Just About Being Faster; It’s About Being Smarter and Better
Take, for example, Infinigon Group, a startup social media analytics provider set up by financial technology veterans and Belzberg Technologies founders Alicia and Sid Belzberg, which has built a tool called Echo that they say delivers advance warnings of market-moving news by monitoring Twitter for mentions of a company or its products, services and executives, given that the first seed of important stories is now often broken by individuals via social media before being identified by mainstream news sources. In addition to providing ranked lists and alerts for companies, Infinigon is also aggregating tweets on specific topics to create gauges that provide real-time insight into key economic indicators that are typically only published on a monthly basis.
Meanwhile, startup cloud “broker-in-a-box” platform provider Tradier has attracted $3 million in new funding from Devonshire Investors, primarily to accelerate development of its API and to fund outreach programs to encourage more third-party developers to build apps on top of its cloud platform.
Sometimes innovation doesn’t need to be technical: Direct Edge’s program of attributing orders to trading firms, introduced last year, now results in 18 percent more executions than equivalent unattributed orders, officials say, and the exchange is now adding another level of attribution that allows approved firms to designate their orders as “retail” flow rather than having to fully identify themselves, a move that—once order-by-order attribution choice rolls out—should improve fill rates while also protecting firms against market impact.
A similarly uncomplicated but common-sense innovation is Wall Street Horizon’s new ETF Calendar feed, which aggregates information from ETF sponsors on projected and announced ETF distributions and dates to help institutional investors better manage ETF investments without needing to trawl a multitude of sources to compile the information themselves.
Of course, there are also innovations that will excite the latency-sensitive traders among us. For example, having rolled out microwave data connectivity for North American markets, Quincy Data is now using microwave connectivity in Europe, and utilizing transatlantic fiber to connect the continents, enabling low-latency data transmission and trading between markets in Chicago, New York, London and Frankfurt.
Meanwhile, low-latency switch vendor xCelor is rolling out XPM², a new line of switch that uses an FPGA card for heavy data processing tasks, and an Intel Xeon motherboard on which users can run their own applications—basically allowing them to run trading strategies or analytics on the switch itself, thus reducing latency and increasing determinism, while introducing features for filtering data streams and bypassing switches for outgoing trade messages.
But in most instances where speed is a factor, the impetus is not to do something faster for speed’s sake, but because it’s a better way of doing it, compared to an inefficient way before. And sometimes, the better way of doing something isn’t to do it faster, but to look at how to do it smarter. That doesn’t mean a new dataset or type of analysis can afford to be slow; but it does mean that speed isn’t everything—in fact, speed is nothing without the smarts to back it up. And at the end of the day, simply going faster isn’t innovating—it’s how you achieve that speed that counts.
Only users who have a paid subscription or are part of a corporate subscription are able to print or copy content.
To access these options, along with all other subscription benefits, please contact info@waterstechnology.com or view our subscription options here: http://subscriptions.waterstechnology.com/subscribe
You are currently unable to print this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
You are currently unable to copy this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. Printing this content is for the sole use of the Authorised User (named subscriber), as outlined in our terms and conditions - https://www.infopro-insight.com/terms-conditions/insight-subscriptions/
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. Copying this content is for the sole use of the Authorised User (named subscriber), as outlined in our terms and conditions - https://www.infopro-insight.com/terms-conditions/insight-subscriptions/
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
More on Emerging Technologies
S&P debuts Spark Assist genAI copilot, draws up ‘Blueprints’ of combined datasets
S&P’s Kensho subsidiary has rolled out new emerging tech products leveraging AI to explore and combine the vendor’s wealth of datasets to solve common use cases.
Nasdaq reshuffles tech divisions post-Adenza
Adenza is now fully integrated into the exchange operator’s ecosystem, bringing opportunities for new business and a fresh perspective on how fintech fits into its strategy.
Liquidnet sees electronic future for gray bond trading
TP Icap’s gray market bond trading unit has more than doubled transactions in the first quarter of 2024.
Verafin launches genAI copilot for fincrime investigators
Features include document summarization and improved research tools.
Waters Wrap: Open source and storm clouds on the horizon
Regulators and politicians in America and Europe are increasingly concerned about AI—and, by extension, open-source development. Anthony says there are real reasons for concern.
Waters Wavelength Podcast: Broadridge’s Joseph Lo on GPTs
Joseph Lo, head of enterprise platforms at Broadridge, joins the podcast to discuss AI tools.
Man Group CTO eyes ‘significant impact’ for genAI across the fund
Man Group’s Gary Collier discussed the potential merits of and use cases for generative AI across the business at an event in London hosted by Bloomberg.
BNY Mellon deploys Nvidia DGX SuperPOD, identifies hundreds of AI use cases
BNY Mellon says it is the first bank to deploy Nvidia’s AI datacenter infrastructure, as it joins an increasing number of Wall Street firms that are embracing AI technologies.
Most read
- Chris Edmonds takes the reins at ICE Fixed Income and Data Services
- Deutsche Börse democratizes data with Marketplace offering
- Nasdaq reshuffles tech divisions post-Adenza