To support its trading of equities, futures and options in multiple markets, the bank need to capture data and run complex analytics in real-time, and says kdb+tick enables it to make better trading decisions and satisfy its compliance requirements.

The proprietary trading division of Baden-Württemberg Bank (BW-Bank) has selected kdb+tick from Kx Systems to enhance its multi-asset trading capabilities by adding real-time data capture and complex analytics. Kdb+tick layers on top of the kdb+ database to capture, manage and analyse millions of streaming ticks as well as terabytes of historical tick data, in real-time, Kx Systems says.

Commenting on its selection of the Kx Systems technology, Christoph Metzger, BW-Bank, says: “No other database vendor was able to provide us with the complete combination of capabilities that Kx could. We trade equities, futures and options in multiple markets. To do this well, we needed to capture data and run complex analytics in real-time, research historical data without delays and set up alarms and signals for tighter control of our trades. Kdb+tick provided all of these features, enabling us to make better trade decisions and satisfy all of our compliance requirements.”

The Kx Systems technology is now live at BW-Bank, the company’s CTO Simon Garland told stpzone.com. The bank was seeking a solution in this area having looked at a number of other third party technologies and considering building inhouse, and made its selection following a proof of concept based on kdb+tick. “The bank needed to reassure itself that the technology is really as fast and reliable as it required,” Garland says. “These solutions really need to be high speed and totally dependable. Our clients need to know they could decide to run an algorithm against some data without slowing performance down: if they want to, using our technology, they could add two or three new exchanges very quickly without buying major new hardware or additional licences from us.”

According to Garland, European banks face more challenges in this area than US banks. “Typically European banks are taking a wider variety of data from more exchanges and have a 24 hour trading requirement: they are collecting data from the US, all over Europe and the Far East, and there is never a good time to stop things and run a back-up,” he explains. Increasing regulatory requirements imposed by the introduction of MiFID – and Reg NMS in the US – will drive demands for solutions such as those provided by Kx Systems even further, he believes. “There is growing regulatory pressure for banks to put in place high performance, dependable databases, because they must be sure they are taking data in from sufficient sources and that they can go back and look at data in five year’s time if necessary,” Garland concludes.

©2005 STP Information Services. All rights reserved. Used by permission.