Anticipating regulatory rule additions and changes present additional challenges for organizations operating in capital markets where the decisions to trade or not to trade involve human and programmatic decisioning processes.

The management of costs associated with the various market data providers must be overseen and supervised on an ongoing basis since the field of providers is vast, and the creativity of how data is being used is unceasing. Decentralized management of data services must be weighed against centralized vendor decisions and the need to control expanding appetites for data . Furthermore, the potential of paying multiple times for the same data from specific exchanges via multiple vendors is all too common today.

Reviewing a firm’s system architecture to store data is also a topic of some interest given that the growth of data available from multi asset class trading sources has grown dramatically over the last several years. This leads to a greater number of users as quantitative teams design models that can analyze greater bodies of data and need to be able to handle such data in a timely way. Existing architecture may well need to give way to newer methods and integrate new technology that will enable greater quantities of data to be retained, utilized, and stored effectively. This will empower a growing base of users who know what they need, when they need it, and the form in which they need it. Balancing the needs of these sophisticated users while being cost effective is indeed a challenge.

Compliance, Risk Management, Quantitative Groups, Portfolio Managers, Traders, Algorithmic Engine users, Smart Routers, Pre and Post Trade Analytic Tools, ATSs, exchanges and supervisory personnel or systems all are consumers of various market data streams of data. The products involved include US and international equities, futures, options, foreign exchange, and fixed income products, and are all growing their appetites for more and more data. Satisfying these needs and justifying the expense involved to management is a growing technological challenge.

The way in which organizations undertake the ongoing evaluation of new technologies, plan for the growth in data needs, and assess performance criteria from discrete users must be an ongoing mission. Planning for hardware, software, and data storage is a growing concern as budgets are constricted and managers are expected to be extremely creative. Monitoring activities, both in the accumulation of data, and its use within the systems, must also be overseen and evaluated to ensure that performance adheres to benchmarks established by the user groups.

Westwater has been helping the capital markets community address market data issues for years. We offer brokers and institutional clients assistance with the development of integrated market data strategies and can assess and recommend changes necessary to existing strategies to meet future market data needs. Some of our related market data offerings include:

• Assessment of Existing Procurement and Supervision process
• Review of Existing Infrastructure
• Review of Contractual Arrangements & Overlapping Services
• Review of Historical Growth Assessment
• Review latency experience & monitoring tools
• Review capacity plans and growth rate of data retention needs
• Review Expense Management disciplines & entitlement inventories