As market data and volumes increase, stock exchanges and other financial firms are challenged to improve transaction speed while reducing latency. IBM WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging combined with IBM�s Power Systems platform, provides extremely low latency with high availability and reliability. For stock exchanges and other financial firms, it provides an end-to-end equity stock trading environment including order generation, processing messages at fixed gateways and routing to matching engines within the exchange. IBM�s Stock Exchange Reference Architecture Implementation runs an unprecedented 12 times faster than any other exchange. It processes 1.2 million equity trades per second with a round trip processing time of under 400 microseconds. It�s the fastest messaging platform in the world, processing tens of millions of messages per second with latency as low as 7 microseconds, reports Nir Naaman, research scientist and Paul Michaud, architect with IBM Global Financial Markets.