Adopting a Modern Data Infrastructure for Trading Analytics

As they seek an edge in their trading and investment activities, hedge funds and other sophisticated trading firms are looking to harness new sources of insight that can allow them to identify and exploit emerging market and industry opportunities. But many organizations are saddled with a disconnected sprawl of legacy systems that are unable to handle the demands of today’s fast and often volatile markets.

The agility of cloud technologies – which can offer rapid temporary access to massive compute resources – offers firms a way of driving the analytics they need to deal with the massive volumes and extraordinary volatility the markets have witnessed during and after the Covid pandemic.

To exploit this opportunity, hedge funds and other trading firms can build toward a more productive data fabric that unlocks emerging opportunities and helps differentiate the firm’s offering. This white paper outlines key considerations and sets out a strategy for taking a modern, agile approach to trading and investment analytics.

Top six takeaways for establishing a modern trading and investment analytics framework:

• Trading firms need to put in place a modern data infrastructure to handle the deluge of new and emerging Big Data sets that can be used to generate new insights into securities, markets, and opportunities.
• Having multiple disconnected legacy systems stifles innovation by limiting firms’ flexibility to add new products and bring together data sets, resulting in lost opportunities.
• Modern data infrastructures that embrace cloud technologies can offer consistent, flexible, and on-demand access to massive data sets in support of sophisticated analytics.
• Cloud is not a panacea. Getting cloud right takes time and needs re-skilling and re-thinking of IT processes.
• Plan for hybrid: Hybrid is proving to be the new normal with some data and processes needing to reside on-premises or in colocation facilities for the foreseeable future.
• Build a data fabric that can support consistent access throughout the trading and investment analytics lifecycle.