Alliance Asset Management Deploys OneTick in Search for Alpha

Sao Paulo, Brazil-based Alliance Asset Management has gone live with a tick data management and complex event processing (CEP) system from OneMarketData. The proprietary trading specialist commenced production use of the OneTick solution a week ago, using it to "generate alpha researching trading ideas that occur at higher frequencies," says Vinicius D'alesandro, a partner at the firm.

“As one of the first Brazilian firms to enter the high frequency trading space and the first firm to co-locate with the BM&F, we pride ourselves in developing advanced quantitative strategies that are supported by cutting-edge technologies,” says D'alesandro.

Currently, OneTick is being used to build quantitative models using historical data captured direct from exchanges, though in the near future it will also be used to analyse realtime data and generate trading signals against these models. Previously, an Oracle database was used to store historical tick data, though the firm realised it needed a more specialised solution to deal with high frequency streaming tick data.

With a history of creating its own software systems, the firm considered building its own tool for high frequency tick analysis, before deciding to focus on research and development of trading strategies, and not on the technology that underpins them. A number of database and CEP products - which D'alesandro is not naming - were evaluated before the decision was made to deploy OneTick.

The evaluation, however, was based on how the system would be used in real life: "The candidate solutions were installed on our site, side by side, populated with both real-time and historical sample data and for six months our team tested the solutions considering fast access to data, performance when analysis was made using both real-time and historical data and performance when using huge amounts of historical data." The systems' ease of use and learning curve to operate the systems was also a factor.

Of the firm's choice of OneTick, D'alesandro says: "OneTick is the only system with a true CEP engine completely integrated with its high performance database and analytics library, allowing us to use just one system to build queries rapidly, eliminating errors associated with maintaining multiple code sets, and abolishing costs associated with purchasing and integrating disparate systems.”

D'alesandro is looking for OneTick to have a direct impact on its trading performance: "We think this business is like a Formula One race, which involves both human ability and high tech applications. We hope to accelerate all the processes of generating new alpha using it as part of our weaponry. That’s what we expect to achieve."