It is very well known how fragmented the FX market is. There are hundreds of dealing banks, ECNs, non-banks, all of them providing liquidity. Each of them providing unique prices at different tiers, in des-centralized architecture. All these different venues provide access to their feeds, using APIs, and in most of the cases its format it’s quite different from each other. In addition, each FX venue could use different connection protocols and messaging formats (FIX 4.2, FIX 4.4, ITCH/OUTCH, etc)
Moreover, depending on the venue, data feeds could be divided in two groups:
- Request For Quotes (RFQ)
- Request For Streams (RFS)
To add even more complexity, nowadays, traders are asking to also have integrated Cryptocurrencies into their feeds.
The cryptomarket is even more fragmented and the technology that each venue or exchange is using is totally different from what traditional financial industry is used to be. They are using REST/Websocket APIs, and the formats from each exchange is “totally” different.
Here is when the trader needs to have a robust and reliable Liquidity aggregator with the ability to “normalize” all these feeds into one common format.
FX Aggregator will allow you to
- Have a better outlook of the overall market
- Build complex strategies using different assets
- Hedging with complex positions
- Price discovering
- Feed other modules like Risk management, Data Modeling
- Be able to execute your orders at best prices
- Smart execution and order routing
- Avoiding slippages
Conclusion
Forex market, and inter-banking system has grown exponentially in the last decades, and the amount of dealers are increasingly growing. All this gives a tremendous opportunity to traders to find the best prices for a specific asset. The available data is huge, and they need tools to decide which price to take (or make) as soon as that price is available (microseconds).
Traders that are not using FX aggregators are trading blindly.
Ariel Silahian
Keywords: #hft #quants #forex #fx #risk $EURUSD $EURGBP $EURJPY #fintech
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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:
â–¬ Strategic Architecture: Aligning trading platforms with P&L objectives.
â–¬ Microstructure Analytics: Founder of VisualHFT; expert in L1/L2/LOB data visualization.
â–¬ 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:
â–¬ Electronic Trading Architecture (Equities, FX, Derivatives, Crypto)
â–¬ Low Latency Strategy & C++ Optimization | .NET & C# ultra low latency environments.
â–¬ Execution Quality & Microstructure Analytics
If my profile fits what your team is working on, you can connect through the proper channel.
