The development of the financial markets has been powered by the twin engines of global interconnectivity and physical proximity. The early modern financial centres often developed at or near busy ports, where merchants gathered to exchange goods and information. The traders of the 17th and 18th century relied on physical proximity to the latest shipping news, which helped traders and insurers quickly adjust prices and policies, creating an efficient marketplace.
As markets became increasingly electronic in the 21st century, the koffiehuizen of Amsterdam or of the Royal Exchange found their modern equivalents in the datacentres of New Jersey and Slough. As the move to digital platforms increased the velocity of trading, financial firms moved their servers closer (or inside) the exchanges to reduce latency. Neutral datacentre colo sites like those belonging to Equinix, Interxion, and Digital Realty prospered as they attracted financial customers and markets who wanted proximity to each other and to the smaller (often OTC or ATS/MTF) trading venues that equally saw a benefit in being close to their potential customers.
Because of this landscape, almost all financial firms with trading operations will have to trade across multiple venues in different physical locations. So the Edge is now well defined for financial markets, as being the locations at which trading connections are richest and within which trading is conducted. This contrasts with the core of financial firm’s processing for less latency sensitive workflows (e.g. retail customers or settlements), much of which is moving to hyperscale cloud locations as vertically integrated financial firms face pressure for financial and energy efficiency.
Beeks Analytics and similar tools have grown up to help firms manage their latency-sensitive workflows. They provide real-time network and trade flow monitoring for low-latency, high-performance trading environments. These tools are essential for trading firms operating in colocation (colo) facilities, where every microsecond matters (for some firms, every picosecond).
With Market Edge Intelligence™, Beeks brings this performance monitoring to its next stage by taking advantage of innovative technology to allow advanced AI-driven analytics at the edge, enabling real-time anomaly detection, predictive insights, and proactive decision-making for ultra-low-latency trading.
“Having smaller models which can operate entirely at the Edge (which for financial firms is often a colo or Exchange data centre) will help address latency concerns, as well as cost of use and privacy issues. Just look at what Apple, Samsung and Google are doing to optimise AI models on the upcoming generation of smartphones, and imagine the power of this applied to financial markets use cases.”
Steve Rodgers, CTO in Analytics
Why monitoring at Edge is so important for financial markets
Financial markets operate at microsecond timescales, where physical distance between systems directly impacts trading performance.
Centralised monitoring architectures introduce unavoidable delays due to:
Propagation latency: Each kilometer of fiber adds ~5 μs delay (compounded by router processing)
Serialization/deserialization overhead: Converting binary market data formats (e.g., ITCH, FIXP) for long-haul transmission
Queueing delays: Congestion at centralised aggregation points during volatility spikes
What sets capital markets apart from other sectors is the intersection of time sensitivity, regulatory scrutiny, and data richness. Markets generate vast volumes of tick data, order flow, and network telemetry every second. By embedding AI capabilities directly into edge appliances in colocation facilities, firms can:
Pre-empt network issues before they impact execution quality.
React to market microstructure changes in real time, by spotting latency spikes, dropped packets, or unusual message patterns as they happen.
Drive execution improvements through high-fidelity signal detection from raw wire data.