AQR Picks Exegy for Low Latency Market Data, Feeding its Trading and Research Systems

In a sign that high-speed data feeds are becoming mainstream on the buy side, AQR Capital Management said it chose Exegy to deliver a low-latency market data to the firm’s trading and research systems.

The deal involves new deployments of Exegy’s hardware accelerated appliances to process foreign exchange, equity and futures market data in data centers with colocation initially in North America, according to today’s release.

AQR is one of the first companies to publically state that it’s using Exegy for not only equities but also for futures and foreign exchange, according to Jeff Britt, EVP of sales at Exegy in a phone interview. The buy side firm, which manages hedge funds as well as long-only funds for pension plans, is using Exegy’s regular ticker plant in a colocation space. Exegy has been seeing growth in firms taking its low-latency enterprise market data system, according to Jeff Britt, EVP of sales for the St. Louis based market data technology company. “Last year, we started selling low-latency enterprise that were replacing other established low latency products or internal systems,” said Britt. With $70 billion in assets under management, AQR is a global investment management firm headquartered in Greenwich, Conn, founded by Clifford Asness.

“We found Exegy to be a best-in-class solution for our low latency market data needs,” commented Brian Hurst, principal at AQR Capital Management, in today’s release announcing the deal. “The fact that we are able to deliver market data very quickly to our trading and research systems enables us to further improve our trade execution, reducing market impact and improving returns for our investors,” added Hurst.

AQR’s decision to use Exegy for foreign exchange is significant as it backs up a trend that Exegy is already seeing. “Foreign exchange is another growth area for Exegy, now that the equity groups and proprietary trading groups out of the banks are not growing as fast as they use to,” said Britt. “FX trading groups are moving to colocation environments and doing something similar to equities like a few years go,” said Britt.

Exegy aggressively expanded its coverage of FX data sources to include broadcast ECN feeds, direct bank connections and consolidated sources. Overall, this is part of the firm’s overall portfolio of 200 direct and consolidated sources for equities, futures and options feeding the Exegy

With its emphasis on hardware acceleration, Exegy started out with mainly high frequency trading firms as clients, and then exchanges like Direct Edge began using it for away smart order routing. Today, Exegy is used by eight of the top 10 banks and also has other buy side customers, said Britt. “There are a lot of buy-side firms that have market data systems that are not obsessed with latency but care about it,” he added.

Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio