Finally, like never before, I can do it.
I have permission to share what 2 hours of a real high-performance trading firm looks like. I will keep the firm “undisclosed”, but this post is to give an idea of what kind of trades and how fast/frequent they are.
A client of mine, using an advance/lightweight platform, is performing excellent returns on the forex market. And the chart you can see by how much.
Several things to look at:
· Winning ratio is 80% (at least in these 2 hours)
· A total of 109 trades has been made over this period
· Average trade, last 206 milliseconds
· Note how transaction cost affect the system
o Blue line is without cost
o Orange accounting transaction cost
· Attempts to close means how many times we tried to flat our position but couldn’t (because of execution, or price movement). Every time there is more than one attempt, the trade is a losing trade. So, that’s the prove on how important execution quality and speed is.
Summary of the collected trades
Equity curve, with and without trading costs
The actual trades
You can find the excel sheet showing all this at this link http://www.slideshare.net/silahian/what-2hs-of-a-real-hft-trading-system-looks-like
Conclusion, execution speed is priority number 1, then the quality of execution and last liquidity.
ENJOY! And Share if you like it!
Ariel Silahian
http://www.sisSoftwareFactory.com/quant
https://twitter.com/sisSoftware
Keywords: #hft #quants #forex #fx #risk $EURUSD $EURGBP $EURJPY
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Subscribe by EmailI help financial institutions architect high-frequency trading systems that are fast, stable, and profitable.
I have operated on both the Buy Side and Sell Side, spanning traditional asset classes and the fragmented, 24/7 world of Digital Assets.
I lead technical teams to optimize low-latency infrastructure and execution quality. I understand the friction between quantitative research and software engineering, and I know how to resolve it.
Core Competencies:
▬ Strategic Architecture: Aligning trading platforms with P&L objectives.
▬ Microstructure Analytics: Founder of VisualHFT; expert in L1/L2/LOB data visualization.
▬ System Governance: Establishing "Zero-Failover" protocols and compliant frameworks for regulated environments.
I am the author of the industry reference "C++ High Performance for Financial Systems".
Today, I advise leadership teams on how to turn their trading technology into a competitive advantage.
Key Expertise:
▬ Electronic Trading Architecture (Equities, FX, Derivatives, Crypto)
▬ Low Latency Strategy & C++ Optimization | .NET & C# ultra low latency environments.
▬ Execution Quality & Microstructure Analytics
If my profile fits what your team is working on, you can connect through the proper channel.



Ariel,
Thank you for this information 🙂
It’s a directionnal trades or arb trades ?
Regards
Ludo
Can’t disclose the strategy.. sorry
Could I ask which broker is offering this conditions? I mean, rough calculations for my retail forex account give me at leat 10 times the transactions costs your client have. And that’s in the best case where spread is low (less than half a pip).
this is for institutional funds. I don’t think retail account could get such costs.
What broker? what leverage? even on institutional the commission is 0.5-1pip, raw spread can be 0 during rush hours. I don’t think you can go under 0.5 pip on combined fees.