BIG DATA

Financial firms are struggling to balance processing high data volumes while managing latency and high volatility in the options markets.  In response, today two pioneers of hardware-accelerated solutions for the financial services industry, ACTIV Financial, a leading provider of fully managed low-latency market data solutions, and Hanweck Associates, a premier financial services provider specializing in risk management systems and technology for institutional investors, announced that they have integrated VoleraFEED, Hanweck’s high-performance options analytics solution, with ACTIV Financial’s ACTIVFeedDirect, a fully managed market data feed, to provide the options industry with the combined analytical power and quality market data needed in the fast-moving marketplace.

Companies such as Ballista Securities, operator of the new Ballista alternative trading system (ATS) that anonymously matches large electronic orders of equities and options, are leveraging the new VoleraFEED system to run complex analytics on the entire U.S. options market landscape, including 300,000 plus options on more than 3,500 underlying stocks, indices and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) – in fewer than 10 milliseconds.   Instead of developing the system in-house, Ballista ATS uses VoleraFEED to calculate the complex analytics for implied volatilities and greeks, enabling volatility traders to efficiently trade options blocks through the system.

“Using VoleraFEED allows us to focus our energies on innovation, rather than the labor intensive tasks associated with market data management,” said Dr. Daniel Marques, chief technology officer (CTO) at Ballista Securities.  “Not only do we get the information we need to facilitate efficient institutional options trading using VoleraFEED, but the latest version of the solution has provided us with significant cost reductions and performance enhancements to help keep us on the cutting edge.”

VoleraFEED leverages ACTIVFeedDirect to reduce the cost of managing compute resources and creating value-add data.  Combined with Hanweck Associates’ Volera high-performance analytics engine, firms such as Ballista Securities process incoming market data and deliver ultra low-latency option analytics to trading and risk management systems.  Compared with standard CPU-based systems, VoleraFEED offers extreme processing benefits such as pricing options at a rate of 14 million options per second compared to 450,000 options per second and calculating two million implied volatilities compared to 65,000 per second on standard platforms.

Between the extreme data volumes and speed needed to process, analyze and distribute OPRA data, financial firms are realizing they need a performance-focused and cost-effective solution that empowers them to quickly and accurately develop complex, proprietary trading strategies.  With the latest version of the solution, financial firms have experienced up to a 10-fold performance increase in complex mathematical calculations and up to 90 percent operational cost reductions.

ACTIV has unparalleled expertise leveraging hardware-accelerated solutions for financial applications, employing field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology in its Market data Processing Unit (MPU) system, while Hanweck is a pioneer in applying graphical processing units (GPUs) to quantitative financial computations.  The combined Hanweck-ACTIV VoleraFEED solution is powered by Hanweck’s GPU-based Volera engine, enabling financial firms, including top-tier banks, broker-dealers, asset managers and hedge funds from around the world, to conduct the complex calculations necessary to manage the marketplace.  Using the solution, risk managers can quickly and accurately gauge positions in near real-time to manage and capitalize on market volatility.

ACTIV Financial and Hanweck Associates will be attending the Options Industry Conference (OIC) from April 30-May 2, 2009 at Hyatt Regency Bonaventure Conference Center and Spa in Weston, FL.  At the event, ACTIV Financial president and co-founder Frank Piasecki will be participating on the panel, “The Tech Arms Race (Messaging: The Key to Being Faster),” on Friday, May 1, at 9:05 a.m. ET.  To request additional information or to schedule a briefing, please contact: Katy Zack, kzack@articulatepr.com or 212.255.0800, ext. 11.