Tervela Message Medium Blog

So here we are sitting on the dock, watching the sunset and reminiscing about the good old days of Lehman, Bear, and - geez - even Madoff.  We watch the tide go out and get lost in the moment.  In the old days, this would be a full page ad in some retirement magazine.  (Given the state of our 401(k)s, we'll probably have a walker next to us on the dock.) Suddenly, the wind changes direction and the tide starts coming in, awaking us from our respite.

Like the tide, the market is now coming back and firms are suddenly awakening and taking notice.  This time, however, it may be a rather high tide.  Many firms that we work with spent the past several months making some much needed architectural and infrastructure changes - fixing up the dock if we follow our coastal analogy.  Other organizations, well, find themselves a bit behind after wrestling with budget and all sorts of other organizational issues, some of which now seem to be abating.  They must be careful, though, not to find themselves caught off guard, sitting on a distant sandbar while the tide rushes in.  Perhaps it's time to look for a quick return to shore.

I'm not sure what prompted this beach imagery; perhaps it was the unseasonably warm weather in the Northeast these past few days.  I do, however, blame Melanie Rodier and her recent piece "Financial Firms Face Massive Market Data Infrastructure Challenges" in Wall Street & Technology for the tide analogy.  She couples her journalism with some recent research by Adam Honoré at Aite Group.  Here is a snippet:

Market data volumes are expected to continue to grow exponentially, further straining market data infrastructures, according to a new report from Aite Group.

 

If U.S. equities message volumes continue to grow at their current pace, they should average 1.2 billion messages per day by 2011, the Boston-based firm said.

 

Storing all Level 1 and Level 2 data for U.S. equities is approaching a requirement of three terabytes per month.

 

For all asset classes, across U.S. market data rates, data volumes nearly doubled on an annual basis over the last two years.

We'll shortly see if the tide hits the seawall.

=rob.ciampa

Tags: market data (4) melanie rodier (1) wall street & technology (3) adam honoré (1) aite group (1) 

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