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Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

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Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#2

Post by dx034 »

I guess low bandwidth is no problem. You only need to send a stream of price changes of the most common instruments (currencies, stocks). And only if there are meaningful movements. I guess a few kbit/s can already provide a lot of value.

How fast would such a connection be? Is there an easy way to calculate the distance the signal takes compared to great circle line?

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#5

Post by ndespres »

chrisseaton wrote: post #3

> Mystery #6: What could be interesting across an ocean? Err.... the rest of the world?

The question is asked in the context of the tower being owned by U.S. Cellular, who would not need shortwave antennae pointed across the pond to service local cell customers.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#7

Post by coob »

dx034 wrote: post #2

I guess low bandwidth is no problem. You only need to send a stream of price changes of the most common instruments (currencies, stocks). And only if there are meaningful movements. I guess a few kbit/s can already provide a lot of value. How fast would such a connection be? Is there an easy way to calculate the distance the signal takes compared to great circle line?

Wouldn't you just send whatever is needed to place the order?

Do all of the processing at the source and just send the final instruction?

(honest question I have no idea how this works)

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#9

Post by tomalpha »

badosu wrote: post #6

Given the limitations of such a medium I wonder if the TCP/IP stack is still viable or another transport protocol is used.

It's been a few years since I was involved with any of this, but even for higher-bandwidth microwave networks you want to squeeze every last bit out of the protocol.

I'd guess in this instance that they'll skip both the TCP and IP layers completely and essentially be sending minimally encapsulated payloads out almost raw. Minimally encapsulated at this level might actually mean no encapsulation. Maybe some error-detection/CRC type stuff as these links tend to be super lossy.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#10

Post by dmeeker »

coob wrote: post #7
dx034 wrote: post #2

I guess low bandwidth is no problem. You only need to send a stream of price changes of the most common instruments (currencies, stocks). And only if there are meaningful movements. I guess a few kbit/s can already provide a lot of value. How fast would such a connection be? Is there an easy way to calculate the distance the signal takes compared to great circle line?

Wouldn't you just send whatever is needed to place the order? Do all of the processing at the source and just send the final instruction? (honest question I have no idea how this works)

Generally speaking, folks use the CME futures as a leading indicator, so you may have several different trading strategies that trade against the European markets and just use the CME pricing as one of their inputs. In that case, the most bandwidth-efficient play is to send your market data over once from Chicago, replicate it / make it available to all your trading strategies, and let them do their work locally.
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