StoneX Case Study
Futures Trading Performance Enhanced with Chronicle FIX and Chronicle Services
About
A multinational financial services company that offers access to various global markets, including commodities, foreign exchange, and equities. Formerly INTL FCStone, the New York-based, Fortune-500 company provides trading, clearing, and risk management solutions worldwide.
About
A multinational financial services company that offers access to various global markets, including commodities, foreign exchange, and equities. Formerly INTL FCStone, the New York-based, Fortune-500 company provides trading, clearing, and risk management solutions worldwide.
CHALLENGE
Need for Speed, Flexibility and Reliability
StoneX trading platforms and execution services connect financial firms, traders, investors and other market participants within the global Futures and FX markets ecosystem.
Achieving consistent success in trading requires a flexible strategy that can adapt quickly to prevailing market conditions.
The ability to fine-tune trading systems to respond quickly and effectively to changing conditions and market trends is critical to maintaining client relationships and business performance.
StoneX recognised that its trading infrastructure had some constraints around speed of reaction to market events, as well as its ability to test and quickly deploy new trading algorithms.
Consequently, it sought to upgrade its underlying trading platform infrastructure.
SOLUTION
Enhanced Features and Flexibility with Chronicle FIX, Services & Tune
Replacing existing technology can be a challenging decision for any organisation. For StoneX, the decision to work with Chronicle was influenced particularly by the enhanced features and functionality of its software, and its nimble and flexible approach to service provision.
In particular, StoneX was impressed with Chronicle’s approach to software development which supports and facilitates an increasing trend toward “buy and build” solutions.
Recognising the challenges faced by market participants in integrating old and new technologies, Chronicle offers its customers maximum flexibility with respect to software licensing and solution implementation. This approach was aligned with StoneX’s stated requirements for a replacement system.
Deliverables
StoneX has implemented a new trading platform in close collaboration with Chronicle’s low-latency experts. The event-driven Chronicle Services framework was chosen as the foundation of the platform; Chronicle FIX and custom-built SBE connectors were used for efficient connectivity with the exchange. The solution was empowered by Chronicle Tune to stabilize latency and minimize jitter. Built-in replication in Chronicle Queue Enterprise helped to make the cluster of platform instances transparent and manageable.
Based on its Chronicle experience to date, StoneX is considering using Chronicle’s expertise and solutions to rebuild other legacy systems.
RESULTS
Elevated Futures Trading with Chronicle
- Significant reduction in test and deployment times for trading algorithms (weeks to hours)
- Ability to quickly fine-tune algos in response to market trends and conditions (essential to profitable trading)
- The solution, built on Chronicle stack, achieves median chase time* of 300 microseconds, far better than required for the trading algorithm to be effective.
*Chase time – the delta between exchange timestamps of two market events – is a key benchmark of trading algorithm performance. The first event is a market state to which an algorithm reacts (an opportunity to trade). The second event is a market state that includes the effect of the algorithm’s action (e.g. an order being either matched or added to an order book).
Products Used
Chronicle Tune is software that automatically configures your OS for optimal performance based on our knowledge and expertise.
A FIX Engine with high availability and microsecond latency, utilised for upstream and downstream connectivity.
A framework for developing event-driven architecture/microservices for custom pricing, hedging and algo strategies.