KX Helps Hedge Fund Expand Into 15 New Markets on One Data Platform

HOW A NEW YORK-BASED HEDGE FUND EXPANDED ITS TRADING UNIVERSE INTO 15 NEW MARKETS WITHOUT RE-ARCHITECTING ITS DATA STACK.

The Customer

The customer is a large New York-based hedge fund. Its trading and quantitative research are organized around independent pods, each developing and running its own strategies. That means each pod arrives with its own data requirements and expects them to be met quickly. The firm has used OneTick Tick History reaching back to 2019, and consolidated its historical and real-time market data onto OneTick Cloud in 2024.

The Challenge

A single trader’s request to add more than 15 markets to the trading universe set off a wider expansion, and the firm’s data environment had to keep up:

• A rapidly growing trading universe, with new strategies requiring coverage across 15 additional markets
• Real-time data feeds needed on the same system as the existing historical tick usage
• Market events such as corrections and symbol changes needed to be handled centrally in the data layer
• Expansion timelines driven by individual pod readiness, moving on different clocks: some pods in days, others over months
• Third-party vendor agreements for new venues that were complex to coordinate alongside the platform work
• Alignment required across multiple internal trading desks before any single expansion could proceed

Why the Firm Chose KX

The firm chose to expand on KX’s OneTick Cloud because it:

• Is a purpose-built financial time-series architecture, handling market events in the platform so strategy code stays focused on the strategy
• Is a single environment for tick history and real-time streaming
• Has a demonstrated ability to handle real-time feed integration complexity that competing platforms could not
• Has the capacity to expand data coverage quickly as new pods and strategies come online
• Hosted deployment in AWS, with managed egress

The Solution

The firm runs OneTick Cloud in AWS, with OneTick Tick History and market data feed adapters. The platform supports:

• Tick history reaching back to 2019, used for signal development and backtesting
• Real-time streaming market data through OneTick Cloud, on the same platform as the history
• CME, CBOT, COMEX, and NYMEX symbol coverage
• ICE and TMX coverage, added to support longer-term infrastructure plans
• Market data feed adapters handling normalization and symbol mapping
• Storage of the firm’s own custom derived data alongside vendor data
• Per-pod data provisioning, so new strategies can be onboarded without new infrastructure

The expansion started with one trader asking for 15 more markets. What made it work is that the request did not require a new system. Historical tick data for signal development and real-time streams for execution run on the same platform, so onboarding a new market is a data question rather than an architecture question. Corrections, symbol changes, and other market events are handled in the platform, which keeps each pod’s code focused on the strategy. And because pods move at their own pace, some in days and some over months, the platform absorbs that variability.

The Outcome

The firm has expanded its symbol universe across 15 new markets, supporting new trading strategies without rebuilding its data infrastructure. Historical research and real-time execution now draw on the same platform, and ICE and TMX coverage is being added to support the firm’s longer-term infrastructure plans. New pods and new strategies are onboarded as data requests rather than as projects.

If your team is scaling into new markets or reconciling real-time and historical data across separate systems, see how OneTick Cloud handles it. Explore OneTick Cloud, or book a demo to talk through your setup.