Resources

Download our handy guide to upcoming exchange changes.

Fast-moving events, new streams of data, the impact of both emerging and legacy technologies, and demanding regulatory regimes all make for a challenging environment for liquidity providers of every type and size.

Exchange-Driven Changes require careful end-to-end management and dedicated resources to assess and implement, and all this is to simply maintain the status quo for a firm.

The concept of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) was first introduced at Google where it was described as "SRE is what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations team." Whilst the term is not new, its adoption within financial technology is a more recent development.

The growth in market data consumption over recent years has also led to an increase in demand for the right tools to control, manage and monitor data usage, ensure compliance with exchange policies, and follow best practices when it comes to data access and control.

Exchange-Driven Changes require careful end-to-end management and dedicated resources to assess and implement, and all this is to simply maintain the status quo for a firm.

Vela's Ollie Cadman joins thought leaders from IPC, Celent and Nasdaq in a discussion on how the use of agile methodology and the cloud ensure success in trading.

In this article first published by e-Forex Magazine, Ahmed Heikal talks about how firms can ensure they provide the best possible environment for their customers to trade as the FX exchange-traded derivatives market evolves.

If you’re providing brokerage services for global Listed Derivatives markets, talk to us about integrating with our award-winning DMA Platform. Find out how we can help drive revenue growth through new clients and lines of business.

There is increasing value to be found in a high-performance direct market access (DMA) platform that makes life easier for new liquidity providers by eliminating pain points, whilst at the same time allowing brokers to rapidly expand their own client reach with new lines of business at no additional cost.

Exchange-Driven Changes require careful end-to-end management and dedicated resources to assess and implement, and all this is to simply maintain the status quo for a firm.

DMA has become increasingly pervasive across the industry in recent years, particularly amongst principal trading groups but also with an increasing number of hedge funds and other buy-side firms engaged in algo trading.

Vela's Sapna Swaly talks about FIX NextGen's initiative to encourage new technologists to join and contribute to the FIX Community.

Vela’s Director of Infrastructure and Security Stacy Mallon participated in an enlightening industry panel hosted by FISD discussing a marketplace for market data products.

Vela shares our views on how the global pandemic has affected us and the industry.

This industry white paper produced by The Realization Group with data provided by Acuiti, explores how DMA is continuing to evolve and investigates how the trend towards a modular, interoperable, component-based offering is reshaping the environment across all asset classes.

Vela's Rob Lane and Ollie Cadman catches up with Harrington Starr's Toby Babb about managing through the pandemic.

The sudden shift in operating models may well have a lasting effect on operations going forward; what was a long-term strategy, vision or aspiration is now a tangible short- to medium-term project, being delivered as the ‘new normal.’

Read this case study to find out how the firm was able to quickly take advantage of high volumes and volatility.

Conversations about cloud adoption are now when, not if and are more focussed on the value that can be added by cloud adoption, above and beyond infrastructure savings.

Gerry Turner, Global Head of Platform as a Service, contributes to this report led by BSO on "Trading without Borders: How can financial firms breakdown barriers and tackle new markets?"

Vela is profiled in Harrington Starr's Most Influential Financial Technology Companies of 2020.

Download this in-depth report on how firms can take advantage of the increased electronification of Fixed Income markets

How sell-side banks are following the lead of electronic liquidity providers

Exchange-Driven Changes require careful end-to-end management and dedicated resources to assess and implement, and all this is to simply maintain the status quo for a firm.

As order and trade messages reach into the multiple millions, brokers need appropriate pre-trade and post-trade technology to capture drop copies and manage risk

The evolving market for non-LIBOR contracts will create greater potential for rapid trading strategies.

As global trading strategies are brought to local APAC markets, firms will need to optimise their market access connectivity and execution technology infrastructure.

At Vela, we want to be a living, breathing example of a firm that doesn’t just talk about the value of our people, but one that does something about it.

While the rise of electronification in the fixed income space creates more opportunities around workflow automation, efficiencies are emerging. From trading to settlement, workflow automation touches the entire trade lifecycle, increasing the pressure to cut cost and do more with less.

Vela's Product Manager Ahmed Heikal sits down with John Lothian News at FIA Expo 2019 to talk about some of our latest initiatives.

When a company, contract or instrument becomes a tradable entity on a stock exchange the amount of data associated with that entity grows exponentially. This data can be grouped into different categories of data, such as reference data, fundamental data and market data.

In an industry as technology-centric as crypto trading, it’s somewhat ironic that speed might be less important than many people might think.

For years, strategic discussions concerning financial trading technology have centred on one burning question: build or buy. But firms are now looking beyond the binary either/or framework and realising the advantage of both approaches.

Vela's Global Head of Product Management and Business Operations Ollie Cadman talks to John Lothian News on latency in today's market environment.

In this blog post, Vela's Pat Gardner looks at how this trend is evolving and what are the implications from a technology perspective.

This an exciting and fast-growing market but there is a lot to be done to standardise, consolidate and regulate it efficiently. Our industry experts and innovators address the possibilities, challenges and solutions for the future growth of institutional crypto trading.

Looking at the evolution of cryptocurrencies, are we entering a new phase? Could this possibly be the start of the “crypto-gets-its-act-together” era, where crypto finally goes mainstream? In this latest blog post, Peggy Sullivan of Vela looks at how the building blocks around institutional adoption of crypto trading are being put together.

As market electronification has taken off, market players have been focused on low-touch or no-touch execution solutions. But there are still times when a trader wants to step in and take control of the situation. In this latest blog post, Vela's Ahmed Heikal looks at the growth of hybrid algo trading.

See how Vela's DMA platform enabled this client to adopt a profitable multi-broker business model with a multi-broker, multi-market DMA environment.

Direct Market Access (DMA) is a method of electronically trading securities on exchanges or other markets. It is typically used by investors and traders using systematic algorithmic strategies that require the minimum distance and systems between them and the exchange.

Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) used to be a buzzword, now it’s a sensible strategy for ambitious trading firms looking to differentiate their offering and increase their profitability.

Learn how this FinTech company improved the reliability, performance, data quality and coverage of its market data delivery while lowering the total cost of ownership.

SONIA futures are growing fast, but smart technology is needed to connect and scale up with the three exchanges that provide them.

MiFID II broadens the scope of the systematic internaliser (SI) regime, not only to cover more asset classes, but also to apply more stringent rules, with the aim of improving pre-trade transparency and improving price efficiency and client executions.

Vela's Global Head of Product Management and Business Operations Ollie Cadman talks to Nasdaq's Jill Malandrino about our cryptocurrency data feed offering in partnership with CoinMarketCap.

Vela's CEO Jen Nayar gives The Options Insider's Mark Longo an update on options, crypto and more.

Firms involved in derivatives markets today face unprecedented margin pressure, from a combination of falling volumes, lower transaction revenues and a high, inelastic cost base. But what if firms’ assumptions about the cost side are incorrect? What if firms could operate on a lower cost basis to achieve faster or better data analysis, superior trade execution and broader coverage of market access? This is all adds up to a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model.

High performance algorithmic trading involves sophisticated software and hardware components operating in harmony to effectively accomplish market operations. Traders are continually seeking faster market data and order execution services with lower slippage to more accurately qualify their orders. As volumes continue to rise, firms are faced with increasing levels of throughput while still needing to maintain their current or even lower latency targets in order to stay competitive.

We're six months on from the introduction of MiFID II and it’s still too early to tell with any certainty where liquidity will flow. This is partly due to the staggered timetable for rolling out a central feature of this new landscape: Systematic Internalisers (SIs).

Vela's Global Head of Platform as a Service Gerry Turner talks to TRADE TV on pre-trade risk.

Avoiding the pain points of pre-trade risk controls may be tough, but it is possible, through the use of API-based systems that normalise information across markets, identify gross exposures and allow controls to take account in real time of any risk offsetting.

Vela's Head of Business Operations Ollie Cadman talks to Nasdaq's Jill Malandrino about the challenges and opportunities created by MiFID II.

Discussion hosted by The Realization Group, led by Vela, Aquis Exchange and Hudson River Trading, on May 23, 2018

Vela's Head of Business Operations Ollie Cadman talks to The Options Insider's Mark Longo about options technology and crypto.

Vela's CEO Jen Nayar talks to John Lothian News about where the company sees opportunity after its double acquisitions of OptionsCity and Object Trading in the summer of 2017.

In the commodities space, the rate of adoption of electronic trading has been markedly slower. But the past year in particular has seen a notable upturn in demand for electronic commodities trading, from both newer entrants as well as more established venues.

Thanks to the growth of the “as-a-service” technology model and the development of hundreds of financial APIs seen in recent years, such market globe-trotting has become a lot easier and much more cost-friendly for firms that want to expand their horizons.

Across a variety of industries, there are clear signs of increased spending on managed services. Whether it involves software-as-a-service (SaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) or platform-as-a-service (PaaS), a raft of reports and surveys show rising appetites for this new way of doing business.

New block trading venues that had been slowly ramping up in recent years have now been fully unleashed, gaining traction as dark trading is curbed under the MiFID II regime.

In this article, Vela's Denver Currie looks at how the new market structure framework has been created to improve transparency, and explains why firms need the right technology to navigate the post January 3rd marketplace.

The quest for low latency – speed – has been the name of the game in trading over the last decade. But trading ingenuity today demands more than speed. While low latency remains a key factor, today’s smart trading firms have more complex goals.

The fixed income markets are going through a period of significant transition, as both economic factors and regulatory reforms force more and more trading into the electronic domain and new liquidity venues proliferate.

Trading venues have launched across fixed income markets in order to fill the void created by the concentration of market makers on the most liquid securities.

Tracking and accessing liquidity in the post-MiFID II landscape will be challenging, writes Ollie Cadman of Vela, particularly under the revised Systematic Internaliser (SI) regime.

Many electronic Fixed Income platforms have launched to make trading easier, but there are now so many that the market has become more complicated, writes Brian Cassin at Vela.

Vela's CEO Jen Nayar speaks to The Options Insider's Mark Longo about the two recent acquisitions, OptionsCity Software and Object Trading.

Vela's CEO Jen Nayar speaks to The Options Insider Mark Longo about data, clouds, and costs.

Direct electronic access under MiFID II remains a source of uncertainty and concern, writes Ollie Cadman of Vela.

This is the third and final event report following an exclusive MiFID II roundtable event held in London in March 2017. We examine the changes that participants from across the market expect to see in business models, trading patterns, and relationships.

This is the second in a series of three reports following an exclusive MiFID II roundtable event held in London in March 2017. We touch on the political and secular decisions as it relates to MiFID II.

This is the first in a series of three reports following an exclusive MiFID II roundtable event held in London on 22 March 2017. We look at how the participants, who came from across the market, emphasised the need to automate more than ever before, and for greater collaboration between buy-side, sell-side, and technology vendors.

Over the last year the rate of growth has increased as investment firms look for global expansion and Asia exchanges seek to expand their liquidity sources and compete to be the one-stop shop within the region. And as demand for market data increases, the willingness of industry participants in the region to spend on market data solutions instead of attempting to build in-house is notably on the rise. So what are the key drivers behind this change and just how much growth should we expect in the coming year for market data services in APAC countries?

European regulators are tearing down the instinctive, qualitative world of trading and replacing it with a measurable, traceable, transparent trading grid. This rigorous framework is imposed by the re-invented Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II), coming into force in January 2018. It will make data an invaluable asset for trading desks. The new rules toughen demands upon equity traders – which MiFID I had harmonised across Europe in 2007 – but also expands the directive to the majority of other asset classes including derivatives, fixed income, FX (excl. spot) and commodity derivatives.

The cross-asset nature of MiFID II will demand significant investment from the asset management and banking communities - how will firms address the various challenges in order to stay both compliant and competitive?

The "Auto-Hedger" job is a delta-sensitive automated hedging tool that supports realtime, dual-decision passive (ie, "work 1 tick better") and aggressive (ie, "lift") modes of execution across a wide variety of configurations.

The Dynamic Skew App (DSA) is a cutting-edge algorithm for Vela's Metro platform that automates the demanding task of calibrating and maintaining vol curves.

The "Axonetric LLC: Profiteer Engine" is a sophisticated and feature-rich job that allows users to automatically seek out and execute on edge-based opportunities, based upon different configurable strategies.

The Realized Futures Volatility Calculator displays actual realized volatility for any selected future calculated on a minute, hourly, and daily basis.

This new application, allows the user to calculate and automatically update offsets for pricing options that are priced with a future that has a different than its own expiration. This differs from the initial version by calculating implied offsets, automated offset updates, and simultaneous management for multiple symbols with the same underlying.

The VolLevels algo is a critical analysis tool for options traders using Vela's Metro platform.

The Advanced Order App allows futures and options traders to place complex orders that cannot be done using just exchange-supported logic.

The "Auto-RFQ" job allows the user to configure rules to automatically respond to strategy RFQs in precise, predetermined ways.

The Eurex SRQS Responder helps users of Metro who are market makers to respond to selective RFQs and confirm deals from within Metro without having to use Eurex Trader.

The "Futures Scalper" job allows the user to automatically trade specified futures contracts around user-defined scalp and profit intervals.

The Quote Monitor allows market makers to monitor and report their market making activity against the obligations on the CBOE (the widget can be configured to handle other exchanges as well).

Vela’s Spread Matrix provides the user with a single window view of futures spread market data as well as execution capabilities.

With the introduction of the NASDAQ Futures exchange, there are now 3 different commodity exchanges that list energy products.

The Depth Finder Widget helps traders track the current book depth for all their placed orders.

The CME Margin Calculator is designed to let Metro users view their initial and maintenance margins for their CME cleared products along with the Net Option Value and Net Future Value.

The P&L Tracker expands on Trade Control allowing traders to see in real time trades going through the market as well as the value of those trades.

The Price Alert widget notifies users if a selected instrument reaches or passes an inputted target price.

The Trade Alert Widget provides users with a convenient way to be notified whenever an order has been booked.

The Underlying Offset Controller allows the user to increase Metro’s functionality with regard to offsets.

The Volatility Fitting App allows for automated management of volatility curves across various products and instrument months.

Back in October, over 1000 FIA conference attendees entered the OptionsCity drawing for their chance to win a weekend with a McLaren.