Wall Street Tries Shortwave Radio to Make High-Frequency Trades Across the Atlantic

Editor Note: While this is not an direct amateur related article it is using our technology. Hopefully it doesn’t hurt our small bands.

Read the full article here:  IEEE Spectrum 

Shortwave radio is venerable technology, dating back to the early part of the 20th century. Radio amateurs, often called hams, use it to contact one another around the world with modest equipment. So it’s surprising, really, that high-frequency traders have only lately begun to take advantage of this technique. But that appears to be what is happening.

I say “appears” because there’s only indirect evidence that traders are pursuing this approach. Most comes from Bob Van Valzah, a software engineer and networking specialist who characterizes himself as a “latency buster.” By chance, he stumbled on an odd-looking cell tower in West Chicago, near where he lives, and after much investigation  concluded that the giant antennas sprouting from it were sending signals about goings on at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to trading centers in Europe.

Who exactly is using this link? If you dig through the FCC’s online license database, you can find that although the official license for the West Chicago tower that Van Valzah investigated was awarded to one company, the “real party of interest” is IMC B.V., a technology-driven trading firm that has invested in McKay Brothers [PDF] and thus is no stranger to the value of low-latency radio links.

Read the full article here:  IEEE Spectrum

Here is another more detail post on what is going on here:
SHORTWAVE TRADING | PART III | FOURTH CHICAGO SITE, EAST COAST