Low-latency trading

Since the start of the 21st Century, the financial markets have become dominated by computer-based trading. Computers and electronic communication have all but consigned face-to-face trading to the history books. Algorithmic Trading (AT), trading where computers assist in the decision-making process, has come to dominate order volumes in most traded instruments. According to a 2021 consultation paper on Algorithmic Trading from ESMA, the European Union's regulatory body[1], 70-80% of all trading activity has included some form of algorithm in the decision process. Furthermore, in the most liquid markets, High-Frequency Trading (HFT), a subset of Algorithmic Trading, accounts for 60%+ of all trading volumes[2]. Both HFT and AT come under the umbrella of Electronic Trading. In this webinar, we consider the subset of Algorithmic and Electronic Trading that is latency-sensitive and referred to as low-latency trading. While HFT dominates this, we examine the more general latency-sensitive scenarios as well.