Algorithmic Trading
Algorithmic Trading
Algorithmic trading may be used in any investment strategy or trading strategy, including market making, interAlgorithmic Trading. Percentage of Market Volume.[14]
market spreading, arbitrage, or pure speculation (including trend following). The investment decision and implementation may be augmented at any stage with algorith- A third of all European Union and United States stock
trades in 2006 were driven by automatic programs, or
mic support or may operate completely automatically.
algorithms.[15] As of 2009, studies suggested HFT rms
Many types of algorithmic or automated trading activ- accounted for 60-73% of all US equity trading volities can be described as high-frequency trading (HFT), ume, with that number falling to approximately 50% in
which is a specialized form of algorithmic trading charac- 2012.[16][17] In 2006, at the London Stock Exchange, over
terized by high turnover and high order-to-trade ratios.[6] 40% of all orders were entered by algorithmic traders,
As a result, in February 2012, the Commodity Futures with 60% predicted for 2007. American markets and
Trading Commission (CFTC) formed a special working European markets generally have a higher proportion of
group that included academics and industry experts to algorithmic trades than other markets, and estimates for
advise the CFTC on how best to dene HFT.[7][8] HFT 2008 range as high as an 80% proportion in some marstrategies utilize computers that make elaborate decisions kets. Foreign exchange markets also have active algorithto initiate orders based on information that is received mic trading (about 25% of orders in 2006).[18] Futures
electronically, before human traders are capable of pro- markets are considered fairly easy to integrate into algocessing the information they observe. Algorithmic trad- rithmic trading,[19] with about 20% of options volume
ing and HFT have resulted in a dramatic change of the expected to be computer-generated by 2010.[20] Bond
market microstructure, particularly in the way liquidity markets are moving toward more access to algorithmic
is provided.[9]
traders.[21]
Emblematic examples
Protability projections by the TABB Group, a nancial services industry research rm, for the US equities
HFT industry were US$1.3 billion before expenses for
2014,[10] signicantly down on the maximum of US$21
billion that the 300 securities rms and hedge funds that
then specialized in this type of trading took in prots
in 2008,[11] which the authors had then called relatively
small and surprisingly modest when compared to the
markets overall trading volume. In March 2014, Virtu
Financial, a high-frequency trading rm, reported that
during ve years the rm as a whole was protable on
1
3 STRATEGIES
History
A further encouragement for the adoption of algorithmic trading in the nancial markets came in 2001 when
a team of IBM researchers published a paper[38] at the
International Joint Conference on Articial Intelligence
where they showed that in experimental laboratory versions of the electronic auctions used in the nancial markets, two algorithmic strategies (IBMs own MGD, and
Hewlett-Packard's ZIP) could consistently out-perform
human traders. MGD was a modied version of the GD
algorithm invented by Steven Gjerstad & John Dickhaut
in 1996/7;[39] the ZIP algorithm had been invented at HP
by Dave Cli (professor) in 1996.[40] In their paper, the
IBM team wrote that the nancial impact of their results
showing MGD and ZIP outperforming human traders
"...might be measured in billions of dollars annually"; the
IBM paper generated international media coverage.
As more electronic markets opened, other algorithmic
trading strategies were introduced. These strategies are
more easily implemented by computers, because machines can react more rapidly to temporary mispricing
and examine prices from several markets simultaneously.
For example, Chameleon (developed by BNP Paribas),
Stealth[41] (developed by the Deutsche Bank), Sniper
and Guerilla (developed by Credit Suisse[42] ), arbitrage,
statistical arbitrage, trend following, and mean reversion.
This type of trading is what is driving the new demand
for Low Latency Proximity Hosting and Global Exchange
Connectivity. It is imperative to understand what latency
is when putting together a strategy for electronic trading.
Latency refers to the delay between the transmission of
information from a source and the reception of the information at a destination. Latency is, as a lower bound, determined by the speed of light; this corresponds to about
3.3 milliseconds per 1,000 kilometers of optical bre.
Any signal regenerating or routing equipment introduces
greater latency than this lightspeed baseline.
3 Strategies
3.4
3.1
Arbitrage
Trading ahead of index fund rebalanc- temporal state and a positive cash ow in at least one state;
in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free prot at
ing
3.2
Pairs trading
3.3
Delta-neutral strategies
3 STRATEGIES
minimizes capital requirements, but in practice never creates a self-nancing (free) position, as many sources incorrectly assume following the theory. As long as there is
some dierence in the market value and riskiness of the
two legs, capital would have to be put up in order to carry
the long-short arbitrage position.
3.6
Scalping
Recently, HFT, which comprises a broad set of buyside as well as market making sell side traders, has become more prominent and controversial.[48] These algorithms or techniques are commonly given names such
as Stealth (developed by the Deutsche Bank), Iceberg, Dagger, Guerrilla, Sniper, BASOR (developed by Quod Financial) and Snier.[49] Dark pools
are alternative trading systems that are private in nature
and thus do not interact with public order owand
seek instead to provide undisplayed liquidity to large
blocks of securities.[50] In dark pools trading takes place
anonymously, with most orders hidden or iceberged.[51]
Gamers or sharks sni out large orders by pinging
small market orders to buy and sell. When several small
orders are lled the sharks may have discovered the presence of a large iceberged order.
Now its an arms race, said Andrew Lo, director of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Laboratory for
Financial Engineering. Everyone is building more sophisticated algorithms, and the more competition exists,
the smaller the prots.[52]
4.3
Event arbitrage
High-frequency trading
5
gives a relation between the prices of a domestic bond, a
bond denominated in a foreign currency, the spot price of
the currency, and the price of a forward contract on the
currency. If the market prices are suciently dierent
from those implied in the model to cover transaction cost
then four transactions can be made to guarantee a riskfree prot. HFT allows similar arbitrages using models
of greater complexity involving many more than 4 securities. The TABB Group estimates that annual aggregate
prots of low latency arbitrage strategies currently exceed US$21 billion.[16]
A wide range of statistical arbitrage strategies have been
developed whereby trading decisions are made on the
basis of deviations from statistically signicant relationships. Like market-making strategies, statistical arbitrage
can be applied in all asset classes.
There are four key categories of HFT strategies: marketmaking based on order ow, market-making based on
tick data information, event arbitrage and statistical arbitrage. All portfolio-allocation decisions are made by
computerized quantitative models. The success of computerized strategies is largely driven by their ability to simultaneously process volumes of information, something
ordinary human traders cannot do.
4.1
4.4 Spoong
Market making
constantly altered to reect the subtle changes in the market as well as to combat the threat of the strategy being
reverse engineered by competitors. This is due to the evolutionary nature of algorithmic trading strategies they
must be able to adapt and trade intelligently, regardless of
market conditions, which involves being exible enough
to withstand a vast array of market scenarios. As a result,
a signicant proportion of net revenue from rms is spent
on the R&D of these autonomous trading systems.[16]
6 Strategy implementation
4.5
Quote stung
Algorithmic trading has been shown to substantially improve market liquidity[68] among other benets. HowNetwork-induced latency, a synonym for delay, measured ever, improvements in productivity brought by algorithin one-way delay or round-trip time, is normally dened mic trading have been opposed by human brokers and
as how much time it takes for a data packet to travel from traders facing sti competition from computers.
one point to another.[62] Low latency trading refers to the
algorithmic trading systems and network routes used by
nancial institutions connecting to stock exchanges and 7.1 Cyborg Finance
Electronic communication networks (ECNs) to rapidly
execute nancial transactions.[63] Most HFT rms de- Technological advances in nance, particularly those
pend on low latency execution of their trading strategies. relating to algorithmic trading, has increased nancial
Joel Hasbrouck and Gideon Saar (2013) measure latency speed, connectivity, reach, and complexity while simultabased on three components: the time it takes for 1) in- neously reducing its humanity. Computers running softformation to reach the trader, 2) the traders algorithms ware based on complex algorithms have replaced humans
to analyze the information, and 3) the generated action to in many functions in the nancial industry. Finance is
reach the exchange and get implemented.[64] In a contem- essentially becoming an industry where machines and
porary electronic market (circa 2009), low latency trade humans share the dominant roles transforming modinto what one scholar has called, cyborg
processing time was qualied as under 10 milliseconds, ern nance
[69]
nance.
[65]
and ultra-low latency as under 1 millisecond.
Low-latency traders depend on ultra-low latency networks. They prot by providing information, such as
competing bids and oers, to their algorithms microseconds faster than their competitors.[16] The revolutionary
advance in speed has led to the need for rms to have
a real-time, colocated trading platform to benet from
implementing high-frequency strategies.[16] Strategies are
7.2 Concerns
While many experts laud the benets of innovation in
computerized algorithmic trading, other analysts have expressed concern with specic aspects of computerized
trading.
7.3
Recent developments
Flash Crash,[22][24] when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged about 600 points only to recover those losses
within minutes. At the time, it was the second largest
point swing, 1,010.14 points, and the biggest one-day
point decline, 998.5 points, on an intraday basis in Dow
Jones Industrial Average history.[76]
10
COMMUNICATION STANDARDS
Eects
10 Communication standards
Algorithmic trades require communicating considerably
more parameters than traditional market and limit orders.
A trader on one end (the "buy side") must enable their
trading system (often called an "order management system" or "execution management system") to understand
a constantly proliferating ow of new algorithmic order
types. The R&D and other costs to construct complex
new algorithmic orders types, along with the execution
infrastructure, and marketing costs to distribute them, are
fairly substantial. What was needed was a way that marketers (the "sell side") could express algo orders electronically such that buy-side traders could just drop the new
order types into their system and be ready to trade them
without constant coding custom new order entry screens
each time.
Though its development may have been prompted by decreasing trade sizes caused by decimalization, algorithmic trading has reduced trade sizes further. Jobs once
done by human traders are being switched to comput- FIX Protocol is a trade association that publishes free,
ers. The speeds of computer connections, measured in open standards in the securities trading area. The FIX
9
language was originally created by Fidelity Investments,
and the association Members include virtually all large
and many midsized and smaller broker dealers, money
center banks, institutional investors, mutual funds, etc.
This institution dominates standard setting in the pretrade and trade areas of security transactions. In 20062007 several members got together and published a draft
XML standard for expressing algorithmic order types.
The standard is called FIX Algorithmic Trading Denition Language (FIXatdl).[89]
11
See also
https:
High-frequency trading
[14] Morton Glantz, Robert Kissell. Multi-Asset Risk Modeling: Techniques for a Global Economy in an Electronic and
Algorithmic Trading Era. Academic Press, Dec 3, 2013,
p. 258.
Mirror trading
[15]
FIXatdl
Technical analysis
12
Notes
13
References
[1] The New Financial Industry, Alabama Law Review, available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2417988
[2] Lemke and Lins, Soft Dollars and Other Trading Activities, 2:30 (Thomson West, 2015-2016 ed.).
[3] The New Investor, UCLA Law Review, available at: http:
//ssrn.com/abstract=2227498
[4] Moving markets Shifts in trading patterns are making
technology ever more important, The Economist, Feb 2,
2006
[5] Algorithmic Trading: Hype or Reality?
[6] Lemke and Lins, Soft Dollars and Other Trading Activities, 2:31 (Thomson West, 2015-2016 ed.).
10
13
REFERENCES
[29] Spicer, Jonathan (15 Oct 2010). Special report: Globally, the ash crash is no ash in the pan. Reuters.
[30] TECHNICAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF SECURITIES COMMISSIONS (July 2011), Regulatory Issues Raised by the
Impact of Technological Changes on Market Integrity and
Eciency (PDF), IOSCO Technical Committee, retrieved
July 12, 2011
[31] Huw Jones (July 7, 2011). Ultra fast trading needs curbs
-global regulators. Reuters. Retrieved July 12, 2011.
[50] Lemke and Lins, Soft Dollars and Other Trading Activities, 2:29 (Thomson West, 2015-2016 ed.).
[33] Amery, Paul (November 11, 2010). Know Your Enemy. IndexUniverse.eu. Retrieved 26 March 2013.
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[39] Price Formation in Double Auctions, Games and Economic Behavior, 22(1):1-29, S. Gjerstad and J. Dickhaut,
January 1998
[40] Minimal Intelligence Agents for Bargaining Behaviours
in Market-Based Environments, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Technical Report 97-91", D. Cli, August 1997
[41] Leshik, Edward; Cralle, Jane (2011). An Introduction to
Algorithmic Trading: Basic to Advanced Strategies. West
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[42] Algo Arms Race Has a Leader For Now, NYU Stern
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[43] High-Frequency Firms Tripled Trades in Stock Rout,
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[52] Articial intelligence applied heavily to picking stocks by
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[54] High-frequency nance and the hedge fund category of
the future
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[57] James E. Hollis (Sep 2013). HFT: Boon? Or Impending Disaster?" (PDF). Cutter Associates. Retrieved July 1,
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[58] Citigroup to expand electronic trading capabilities by
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(International Herald Tribune), July 2, 2007, retrieved
July 4, 2007
[59] Event Arb Denition Amex.com, September 4th 2010
[60] Quote Stung Denition. Investopedia. Retrieved October 27, 2014.
[61] Diaz, David; Theodoulidis, Babis (January 10, 2012).
Financial Markets Monitoring and Surveillance: A
Quote Stung Case Study. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
[62] High-Speed Devices and Circuits with THz Applications
by Jung Han Choi
[63] http://glossary.reuters.com/index.php?title=Low_
Latency_Trading
[64] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=
1695460
11
[65] http://home.business.utah.edu/finmh/moallemi.pdf
[66] FIXatdl - An Emerging Standard, FIXGlobal, December
2009
[67] Preis, T.; Paul, W.; Schneider, J. J. (2008), Fluctuation
patterns in high-frequency nancial asset returns, EPL
(Europhysics Letters) 82 (6): 68005, doi:10.1209/02955075/82/68005
[68] HENDERSHOTT, TERRENCE, CHARLES M.
JONES, AND ALBERT J. MENKVELD. Does Algorithmic Trading Improve Liquidity?" (PDF), Journal of
Finance, 2010
[69] Lin, Tom C.W., The New Investor, 60 UCLA 678 (2013),
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[70] Black box traders are on the march The Telegraph, 27 August 2006
[71] Myners super-fast shares warning BBC News, Tuesday 3
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[72] Enter algorithmic trading systems race or lose returns, report warns, Financial Times, October 2, 2006
[73] Cracking The Streets New Math, Algorithmic trades are
sweeping the stock market.
[74] The Associated Press, July 2, 2007 Citigroup to expand
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[75] Knight Capital Group Provides Update Regarding August
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[76] Lauricella, Tom, and McKay, Peter A. Dow Takes a
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[78] Sentiment Algos
[79] Siemons Case Study Automated Trading Desk, accessed
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[81] http://www.bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/
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[82] U.K. Foresight Study Slammed For HFT Bias". Markets
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[83] C Fiedler, design high-frequency system (algorithmic
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[84] Dodgy tickers, The Economist, March 8, 2007
[85] Pleasures and Pains of Cutting-Edge Technology Mar 19,
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14 External links
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15
15
15.1
15.2
Images
15.3
Content license