Developing High-Frequency Trading Systems

Use your programming skills to create and optimize high-frequency trading systems in no time with Java, C++, and Python

Key Features

• Learn how to build high-frequency trading systems with ultra-low latency
• Understand the critical components of a trading system
• Optimize your systems with high-level programming techniques

Book Description

The world of trading markets is complex, but it can be made easier with technology. Sure, you know how to code, but where do you start? What programming language do you use? How do you solve the problem of latency? This book answers all these questions. It will help you navigate the world of algorithmic trading and show you how to build a high-frequency trading (HFT) system from complex technological components, supported by accurate data.

Starting off with an introduction to HFT, exchanges, and the critical components of a trading system, this book quickly moves on to the nitty-gritty of optimizing hardware and your operating system for low-latency trading, such as bypassing the kernel, memory allocation, and the danger of context switching. Monitoring your system’s performance is vital, so you’ll also focus on logging and statistics. As you move beyond the traditional HFT programming languages, such as C++ and Java, you’ll learn how to use Python to achieve high levels of performance. And what book on trading is complete without diving into cryptocurrency? This guide delivers on that front as well, teaching how to perform high-frequency crypto trading with confidence.

By the end of this trading book, you’ll be ready to take on the markets with HFT systems.

What you will learn

• Understand the architecture of high-frequency trading systems
• Boost system performance to achieve the lowest possible latency
• Leverage the power of Python programming, C++, and Java to build your trading systems
• Bypass your kernel and optimize your operating system
• Use static analysis to improve code development
• Use C++ templates and Java multithreading for ultra-low latency
• Apply your knowledge to cryptocurrency trading

Who this book is for

This book is for software engineers, quantitative developers or researchers, and DevOps engineers who want to understand the technical side of high-frequency trading systems and the optimizations that are needed to achieve ultra-low latency systems. Prior experience working with C++ and Java will help you grasp the topics covered in this book more easily.

Table of Contents

1. Fundamentals of a High-Frequency Trading System
2. The Critical Components of a Trading System
3. Understanding the Trading Exchange Dynamics
4. HFT System Foundations – From Hardware to OS
5. Networking in Motion
6. HFT Optimization - Architecture and Operating System
7. HFT Optimization – Logging, Performance, and Networking
8. C++ – The Quest for Microsecond Latency
9. Java and JVM for Low-Latency Systems
10. Python – Interpreted but Open to High Performance
11. High Frequency FPGA and Crypto

Sebastien Donadio is the Chief Technology Officer at Tradair, responsible for leading the technology. He has a wide variety of professional experience, including being head of software engineering at HC Technologies, partner and technical director of a high-frequency FX firm, a quantitative trading strategy software developer at Sun Trading, working as project lead for the Department of Defense. He also has research experience with Bull SAS, and an IT Credit Risk Manager with Socit Gnrale while in France. He has taught various computer science courses for the past ten years in the University of Chicago, NYU and Columbia University. His main passion is technology but he is also a scuba diving instructor and an experienced rock-climber.

Sourav Ghosh has worked in several proprietary high-frequency algorithmic trading firms over the last decade. He has built and deployed extremely low latency, high throughput automated trading systems for trading exchanges around the world, across multiple asset classes. He specializes in statistical arbitrage market-making, and pairs trading strategies for the most liquid global futures contracts. He works as a Senior Quantitative Developer at a trading firm in Chicago. He holds a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. His areas of interest include Computer Architecture, FinTech, Probability Theory and Stochastic Processes, Statistical Learning and Inference Methods, and Natural Language Processing.

Romain Rossier brings 19+ years of experience mostly as a Software Architect in the financial industry, specializing in low latency, high performance java software design and development. He is currently the Chief Architect for the HCTech FX Proprietary Trading engine. He also built and led the software development team at HCTech, where he oversaw and developed the HFT platform architecture for FX, Futures and Fixed Income. Prior to HCTech, Romain was Director of the Currenex lab where he led the team responsible for the development of the Currenex Intelligent Pricing System. Romain holds a Master of Science in Communication Systems from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.