Trading System Architecture, Layer by Layer: What Each Layer Decides and How It Fails
A map of the nine layers of an electronic trading system, from market structure to code: what each layer decides, how it fails, and a check your team can run.
How Do I Design High-Frequency Trading Systems and Its Architecture. Part I (2026 Update)
A 2026 update to the original Part I guide on HFT system architecture: data feed handler, FIX/SBE protocols, limit order book, pre-allocation, and what has changed since 2017.
The Electronic Trading Stack: 54 of My Blog Articles, Now a Book
The Electronic Trading Stack collects 54 of my articles on electronic trading systems, 2021 to 2026, into one indexed, printed reference.
CppCon 2026 for High-Frequency Trading: The Complete Report
CppCon 2026 ran from 12 to 18 September in Aurora, Colorado. Roughly 150 sessions were on the programme. This report…
Benchmark Before You Refactor: A Latency Harness for HFT C++ Systems
Why a benchmark harness comes before a low-latency C++ refactor: coordinated omission, unstable clocks, and the seven rows that make two latency numbers comparable.
The .NET Tier-0 JIT Cliff: QuickJitForLoops Costs 7.72x on a Parser Hot Path
While benchmarking C# against C++ for a FIX decoder and an order book, one configuration default cost more than the…
Sequencer Determinism: Why Wall-Clock Time and a Monotonic Counter Give You Two Different Order Books
Two NTP-synced clocks on the same rack can drift 50 microseconds apart. If the next two events in your order…
The Empty-BBO Problem: Designing an FX Circuit Breaker for Real Risk Management
Inside a sell-side FX desk circuit breaker: why a one-LP book is a risk management liability, and what SNB 2015 still teaches CTOs today.
Venue Message Rate Limits: Architecting a Multi-Venue Quoting Engine Around Exchange Throttling
Most quoting engines carry one number for how fast they are allowed to send. It gets written into a config…
I Was Asked to Rebuild an HFT System in C#. I Laughed. Then I Measured It Twice.
A client asked me to architect an institutional crypto trading system on .NET. Twenty years of building order books in…
The Order-to-Trade Ratio Has Four Readings. Most Desks Only Know One.
In April, I opened the cancel stream as an alpha input. The Cancel-Stream Gap argued that a signal stack built…
Multi-Venue Trading Architecture: The Four Layers Beneath Smart Order Routing
A fill lands on venue A. The strategy’s risk logic reads it, computes exposure, and fires a hedge. Milliseconds later,…