Expert Interviews

Here at the HFT Review, we feature exclusive in-depth interviews with the real HFT thought leaders, including practitioners, technologists, regulators, vendors, market operators and academics. We talk to people with wide-ranging points of view (both in favour of and against the various aspects of HFT) to give you balanced editorial coverage so that you can form your own opinions on what has become one of the most controversial topics in the finance industry.

If there is a particular industry expert that you would like us to interview, please Contact Us Here.

How to Maximize Java Application Performance in a Trading Environment

In this interview, Scott Sellers, President, CEO & Co-Founder of Azul Systems, discusses how application performance in a Java trading environment can be massively improved by using the right Java Virtual Machine (JVM). [Sponsored Interview]

Q&A With Louis Lovas, Director of Solutions, OneMarketData

Louis Lovas, Director of Solutions, OneMarketData, answers some questions about data management issues associated with quantitative and systematic trading, and looks at the relationship between CEP and tick data management

Adopting the Right Approach to FPGA Implementation

Arnaud Derasse, CEO and Laurent de Barry, Head of Customer Support of Paris-based Enyx, specialists in FPGA hardware acceleration solutions for financial trading, discuss how firms are increasingly running applications at “wire level” to reduce latency. [Sponsored Interview]

Humans vs. Robots: Man Fights Back

The ‘rise of the machine’ is a phenomenon frequently hyped up in the financial media. It stirs up luddite-esque emotion from many investors and brings about a fear of the unknown. There is however hope for humans. Professor Alex Preda talks to HFT Review about the revival of Man in the battle against the bots.

How The Speed Traders are Adapting to Changing Markets

Edgar Perez, author of The Speed Traders, delivers his views on the changing nature of high frequency trading in todays markets.

Leveraging FPGA-Enabled Acceleration Platforms For Financial Trading

Stephane Hauradou, Vice President of ACCELIZE, a leading provider of FPGA-based technology for the Financial Services Industry, discusses some of the choices that firms face when implementing FPGA-enabled technology in their trading architectures. [Sponsored Interview]

Why Nanosecond Precision is Needed in High Performance Trading Environments

Dan Joe Barry, Vice President of Marketing at Napatech, discusses why firms are having to raise the bar in terms of timing precision and accuracy as they go from 1 Gbps networks to 10, 40 and 100 Gbps, and why microsecond accuracy is not going to cut it any more [Sponsored Interview]

The Evolution of the Buy-Side

Robert Boardman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, EMEA at ITG (Investment Technology Group) talks about how the buy-side is adapting to an increasingly complex and fragmented market, discussing the interaction of traditional buy-side with HFT and the dangers of uninformed regulation.

The Evolution of FPGA in the Financial Markets

Mohammad Darwish, Chief Executive Officer of AdvancedIO Systems, talks about how FPGA technology is being increasingly adopted in the financial markets and discusses the future evolution of FPGA technology [Sponsored Interview]

Accelerating Transactions Through FPGA-Enabled Switching

John Peach, Consulting Engineer for EMEA at Arista Networks , talks about how FPGA-enabled switching is now helping a number of financial markets participants accelerate their transactions, exploring use cases of in-line risk checking, feed-handling and data translation [Sponsored Interview]

Deterministic Latency and Scalability via FPGA Matrix Architecture

Yves Charles, CEO of Novasparks, discusses the true impact of non-deterministic latency on different categories of market participant and how to get around issues with scaling FPGA-based solutions by deploying an FPGA Matrix architecture [Sponsored Interview]

Clearing and Interoperability in Europe

Diana Chan, CEO of EuroCCP (European Central Counterparty Limited), the European clearing subsidiary of DTCC, discusses how and why clearing and interoperability in Europe is important to high frequency trading firms, and looks at some of the differences between the clearing landscapes of Europe and US.

How Does Proprietary HFT Benefit Investors?

Mark Gorton, Managing Director and Founder of Tower Research Capital LLC, a proprietary trading firm based in New York that specializes in quantitative trading and investment strategies, addresses some of the recent criticisms levelled at high frequency trading firms and explains how HFT benefits end user investors.

The FIX Inter-Party Latency Working Group

Henry Young, CEO at TS-Associates plc and Raymond Russell, CTO at Corvil, Ltd., discuss the work of the FIX Inter-Party Latency Working Group, the group formed under the auspices of FIX Protocol Limited to develop a new set of industry standards around latency measurement.

Man versus Machine, Part Two

Professor Dave Cliff, Director of the UK Large-Scale Complex IT Systems Research Initiative at the University of Bristol, discusses the use of cloud computing in HFT, FPGA & hardware-accelerated trading and adaptive, self-learning algorithms.

Innovation and Risk in Today’s Financial Markets

Leo Melamed, financial market innovator, writer, lecturer, international authority on futures markets and Chairman Emeritus of the CME Group, Inc, discusses how exchanges are evolving, the importance of innovation and the changing nature of risk in today's financial markets

Running a Proprietary HFT Firm

Raj Fernando, Founder & CEO, and Leslie Sutphen, Director of Strategies and Implementation at Chicago-based proprietary HFT firm Chopper Trading, discuss how they run their trading firm and manage their risk, and share some thoughts regarding the current regulatory landscape.

Where is Server I/O Headed and is it Keeping Up with Compute and Storage?

Yaron Haviv, Vice President of Data Center Solutions at Mellanox Technologies, talks about some of the latest technological developments impacting trading systems architectures. The company recently announced the World’s Lowest Latency for High Frequency Trading [Sponsored Interview]

Beyond Latency – Utilizing Ultra Accurate Network Timing in HFT Systems

Paul Rushton, Managing Director at Korusys, talks about delivering highly accurate timing and synchronization to HFT systems and how that time accuracy can be realized and utilized to improve both trading performance and latency measurement. (Sponsored Interview)

Managed Futures Case Study – 2100 Xenon

Jay R. Feuerstein, CEO/CIO and Bruce Mumford, Director of Marketing/Investor Relations at 2100 Xenon Group, a managed futures systematic hedge fund discuss systematic versus black box trading and how to combine short term opportunistic trading with longer term trend-following strategies.

The FIA European Principal Traders Association

Mark Spanbroek, Vice-Chairman of the FIA European Principal Traders Association and a former partner at Getco discusses myths and misconceptions around HFT, pre-trade and post-trade risk, European regulation, market transparency and the recently blocked DB/NYSE merger.

Market Evolution, Liquileaks and the Economic Benefits of Speed

Albert J. Menkveld, Associate Professor of Finance at VU University Amsterdam and Research Fellow at TI-Duisenberg School of Finance, discusses his extensive research into market structures, liquidity and the impact of high frequency trading on the market.

Diversity, Liquidity & HFT – An Exchange Perspective

Nicolas Bertrand, Head of Equity and Derivatives Markets at the London Stock Exchange Group, discusses the need for liquid and diverse order books, the impact of HFT on the European markets and how the markets might evolve in 2012 and beyond.

Man Versus Machine, Part One

Professor Dave Cliff of the University of Bristol, Director of the UK Large-Scale Complex IT Systems Research Initiative, discusses machine-based trading and the changing roles of humans and computers in the ever more technology-driven financial markets.

Why Network Timing Accuracy is Increasingly Important in Electronic Markets

Charles Barry, PhD and Senior Director of Engineering at Juniper Networks, talks about recent advances in network timing and clock synchronization, an area of increasing importance in the world of computer-based trading. (Sponsored Interview)

Servicing Quantitative and Systemic Clients and Keeping Speed in Perspective

Thomas Chippas, Managing Director and Head of Quantitative Prime Services for Barclays Capital, discusses how the needs of quantitative and systemic clients are evolving, and why speed and low latency is only one part of the equation.

The Potential Impact of Dodd Frank on HFT and Proprietary Trading Firms

Scott Parsons, Co-Founder and Managing Principal at Washington DC-based strategic advisory and lobbying firm, Delta Strategy Group, talks about the wide-reaching Dodd-Frank legislation in the US, and how it will impact high frequency trading and proprietary trading firms, particularly regarding how those fims may be categorised under the new Act.

Improving Academic Research into HFT & Fighting High Frequency Spam

Eric Scott Hunsader, Founder of Nanex LLC, the US data feed company, about the explosion of data in the US financial markets, conflicting reports around the causes of last year’s “Flash Crash”, some problems with current academic research into HFT and how to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in today’s electronic markets.

How to Run 20-plus Pre-Trade Risk Checks in Under a Microsecond

Matt Dangerfield, Director of Trading Solutions at Fixnetix, explains how his firm helps market participants comply with SEC Rule 15c3-5 (the so-called “market access rule”), by enabling them to run more than 20 pre-trade risk checks in under a microsecond. (Sponsored Interview)

The Good and Bad of HFT and The Importance of Consistent, Informed Regulation

Hirander Misra, Founder of electronic trading advisory firm Misra Ventures, investigates issues around “good” and “bad” forms of high frequency trading, and explains why market regulators need to take a more consistent, informed and pragmatic approach.

Submersion Cooled Liquid Blades – Game-Changing Technology in the Data Centre?

Chris Butler, Business Development Manager at Supermicro UK and Chad Attlesey, President, CTO and Co-Founder of Hardcore Computer, discuss how and why their submersion-cooled technology is generating significant interest among data centres and co-location facilities. (Sponsored Interview)

Over-Clocking and Submersion Cooling – The Future of HFT Technology?

Chad Attlesey, President, CTO and Co-Founder of Hardcore Computer and Chris Butler, Business Development Manager at Supermicro UK, talk about the work they are doing in the desktop/workstation space with their unique submersion cooling technology, which enables them to over-clock CPUs to run faster, cooler and longer. (Sponsored Interview)

The LMAX Disruptor – Open-Sourced Mechanical Sympathy in Action

Martin Thompson, Chief Technical Officer of LMAX, explains some of the design principles behind the Disruptor, the Concurrent Programming Framework for high-performance, low-latency transaction processing, which is used to run LMAX’s own trading platform and was open-sourced earlier this year.

The Growing Demands for Historical Tick Data in the HFT and Systematic Hedge Fund Space

Gordon Bloor, Chief Executive of Morningstar Real-Time Data, the division of Morningstar that specialises in delivery of consolidated real time and historical market data, looks at the growing demand from HFT firms and systematic hedge funds for consolidated, normalised, full depth-of-book historical tick data.

HFT and the Fairness of Financial Markets

James J Angel, Associate Professor of Finance, McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, investigates whether the markets are “fair”, particularly with regards to high frequency trading, and what that concept of fairness actually means.

HFT Case Study – Allston Trading

Peter Nabicht, CTO of Allston Trading, provides a rare insight into what a high frequency trading firm actually does and how it makes its money

HFT and European Market Structure

Niki Beattie, Owner and Managing Director at Market Structure Partners, talks about how the landscape of market structures in Europe and around the world is rapidly changing, and the challenges that firms face as a result.

Staying Competitive in the High Frequency Trading Space

Will Mechem, Managing Director of quantitative high frequency trading firm Pan Alpha Trading, and Managing Director of consulting firm Willard John Thomas Associates, talks about how to stay competitive in the ever evolving HFT space.

HFT Careers and How to Get Into High Frequency Trading

Dominic Connor of P&D Quant Recruitment provides some valuable HFT career guidance for those who are looking to get into the game.

Can Predictive Algorithmic Switching be the Buy-Side’s Answer to High Frequency Trading?

Marcus Hooper, CEO & Executive Director, Pipeline Financial Group Limited, discusses how predictive algorithmic switching technology can enable buy-side firms to maximise access to liquidity and minimise adverse selection.

Low Latency, High Performance Network Services for High Frequency Trading

Alastair Kane, Vice President of Segment Marketing for Financial Services at Level 3 Communications, talks about how Level 3′s business is evolving to cater for the growth of high-speed, computer driven trading. (Sponsored Interview)

How FIX Protocol Limited is Evolving with the Growth of Computerized Trading

Kevin Houstoun, Chairman and Co-Founder of Rapid Addition and Co-Chair of the FIX Protocol Limited Global Technical Committee, discusses how FIX Protocol is evolving with the continued growth of computerized, high frequency trading.

The Growing Use of MATLAB in the High Frequency Trading World

Steve Wilcockson, Industry Manager, Financial Services at MathWorks discusses how MATLAB, the technical computing language, is increasingly being used to develop high frequency trading and algorithmic trading systems

European Regulation, High Frequency Trading and the Draft MiFID Review

Dr Kay Swinburne, Conservative MEP for Wales, discusses how the changing landscape of European financial legislation, particularly the wide-ranging MiFID Review, may impact high frequency trading.

HFT Pushes the Market Forward to Adopt Next Generation Technology

Stephane Leroy, Global Head of Sales and Marketing at technology vendor Quant House, talks about the technology implications on the market as high frequency trading continues to grow and evolve. (Sponsored Interview)

Systematic Trading and Quantitative Hedge Funds

Dr Sonia Schulenburg, CEO of Level E Limited and the guiding light behind the MAYA technology and the MAYA Quantitative Investment Fund, talks about some of the challenges of setting up a quantitative hedge fund.

Outsourcing the Front Office, One-Wire Connectivity and Risk on a Chip

Hugh Hughes and Bob Fuller, senior executives at HFT vendor Fixnetix, answer questions about their company and where it sits in the High Frequency Trading ecosystem.

HFT on the Cloud, Noise Filters and Traffic Monitoring

Ken Yeadon, Managing Partner of Thematic Capital Partners LLP, looks at the intersection of High Frequency Trading with Cloud Computing, Social Media and unstructured news channels.

Market Surveillance, Liquidity Shocks and Regulation

Natan Tiefenbrun, Commercial Director of Turquoise, the pan-European MTF, shares his thoughts on market surveillance, transparency, market manipulation vs acceptable trading practices and the problems with the various regulatory proposals that are currently doing the rounds

High Frequency Trading and Cyber Terrorism

Roderick Jones, CEO of Concentric Solutions, talks about the potential security risks associated with High Frequency Trading and how those risks should be managed to prevent the possibility of cyber-terrorist attacks.

Extreme Connectivity & The Rise of The Cyber Cities

Bob Giffords, banking consultant, shares his insights on the world of high frequency trading, focusing on the growth of machine to machine (m2m) e-commerce and the evolution of "cyber cities".

NonLinearity, Artificial Intelligence & Genetic Algorithms

Adam Afshar, President and CEO of Hyde Park Global Investments, talks about: ow high frequency trading addresses nonlinearity, the use of artificial intelligence systems in HFT and how Hyde Park Global uses genetic algorithms and news flow algorithms to capture alpha.

The Changing Role of The Broker

Joe Gawronski, President of Rosenblatt Securities, talks about how the traditional role of the broker is changing as high frequency and computer-based trading becomes more prevalent.

Why Quality is Critical in HFT Systems

Dr Andrew Kumiega Professor of Finance at the Illinois Institute of Technology, discusses the relationship between industrial engineering and financial engineering and the importance of back-testing and following a Quality approach when designing high-frequency trading systems.