Bootstrapping an Ultra Low Latency Trading Firm, Part 3.1

Well, there are market data feeds, and then there are market data feeds. For example, say you want to write a program to look at all option data in North America. You can go pay for a full feed from OPRA. This requires over 1Gbps bandwidth from the exchange and processing power to handle over 5 million messages a second doing whatever it is you want to do with them.

I asked around back when the other HFT topics popped up and I believe a low-latency raw feed from Bloomberg would run somewhere in the $5k-$10k /month range depending on configuration before you tack on any fees the exchanges add for realtime vs delayed access per unique user. I'm curious whether startups actually want feeds like this, or say, would want to use a node.js async front-end on the SDK..

I'm an ultra low Frequency trader. Bought some index funds 5 years ago. Talk to my broker once a year. Recently got out of one fund, into another. Whoo hoo!

I need a product that notifies me if there's something I need to do, like deal with a bankruptcy or a fund is being discontinued and I need to reinvest. As it is, the process is a) receive half a dozen mailing each month about funds and b) throw them all away (too much information).

I know, my broker can deal with all that. So, can he be replaced? Yes, surely. Anybody got ideas?

Veyron, I wish you a fine recovery from the last few days. :-)

First off, I'd pay. Second, I'll donate as soon as the kickstarter page is up. Last, can you clarify what the granularity of the data would be? Are we just talking about closing prices, periodic price updates during the day (e.g. every 5 minutes), real-time, etc.?