High-Speed Data Feed

High-speed data feeds, which transmit data such as price quotes and yields in real time and without delays, are used in high-frequency trading for real time data analysis.

High-speed data feeds provide computerized algorithmic traders with faster more reliable data. Because high frequency trading (HFT) is driven by faster access to data, there has been a technological arms race, as data feeds and transactions approach the speed of light. HFT creates natural monopolies in market data, which critics say has given high-frequency traders an unfair advantage over institutional and retail investors.

Advocates claim HFT has a beneficial role in the market, deepening market liquidity and pricing securities more efficiently than other intermediaries, and lowering lowering trading costs for everyone by tightening spreads. To maintain a fair and orderly market, the New York Stock Exchange introduced designated market makers in 2008, to facilitate price discovery and provide liquidity to both institutional and retail investors — much of it electronically through HFT.

The HFT industry has used many controversial predatory trading practices — as our guide to HFT terminology outlines — such as front running, where traders detect incoming orders and jump in front of them, before they can be executed. Investors say that because many HFT reduces long-run returns because they take a share of the profit.

The stock market now consists of a vast fragmented network of interconnected and automated trading systems, in which high frequency trading, characterized by high speeds, ultra-short holding periods and high order-to-trade ratios, comprise a meaningful share of U.S. equity trading volume, even though that share has shrunk somewhat to around 50%. Smaller volumes, low market volatility and rising regulatory costs have compressed HFT margins, and led to consolidation in the industry.

To address issues of exchange competition, regulators have introduced speed bumps, that randomize entry times and introduce random order processing delays. After the new IEX exchange introduced its alternative trading system, which slows orders by 350 microseconds to neutralize high-frequency traders' advantage, the New York Stock Exchange followed suit in 2017, on its exchange for small and mid-cap companies.

Bloomberg's B-PIPE data feed, Thomson Reuters’ Matching Binary Multicast Feed and EBS Brokertec’s Ultra are examples of high-speed feeds, which provide investors and vendors market data with extremely low latency — the that elapses from the moment a signal is sent to its receipt.