Comment by dmurray
2 days ago
I never saw a need for this in HFT. In my experience, GPS was used instead, but there was never any critical need for microsecond accuracy in live systems. Sub-microsecond latency, yes, but when that mattered it was in order to do something as soon as possible rather than as close as possible to Wall Clock Time X.
Still useful for post-trade analysis; perhaps you can determine that a competitor now has a faster connection than you.
The regulatory requirement you linked (and other typical requirements from regulators) allows a tolerance of one second, so it doesn't call for this kind of technology.
> I never saw a need for this in HFT. In my experience, GPS was used instead, but there was never any critical need for microsecond accuracy in live systems.
mifid ii (uk/eu) minimum is 1us granularity
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...
It's 1 us granularity, which means you should report your timestamps with six figures after the decimal point.
The required accuracy (Tables 1 and 2 in that document) is 100 us or 1000 us depending on the system.
> The required accuracy (Tables 1 and 2 in that document)
no, Tables 1 and 2 say divergence, not accuracy
accuracy is a mix of both granularity and divergence
regardless, your statement before:
> The regulatory requirement you linked (and other typical requirements from regulators) allows a tolerance of one second, so it doesn't call for this kind of technology.
is not true
2 replies →
> mifid ii (uk/eu) minimum is 1us granularity
1us is nothing special for GPS/NTP/PTP appliances (especially with OCXO/rubidium oscillators):
* https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/clock-and-timing/sy...
* https://www.meinbergglobal.com/english/productinfo/gps-time-...