[zelly]

The proprietary API is guaranteed to be slower. The brokers must send order flow as FIX to the exchange. This adds latency of however long it takes the broker's software to translate to FIX. I don't think there are any successful quant strategies that don't rely on speed, so basically anything with a proprietary API is solely for amateurs.

[oarsinsync]

> I don't think there are any successful quant strategies that don't rely on speed

There are plenty of successful quantitative algorithms that are in use by non HFT firms

> so basically anything with a proprietary API

If you’re not a direct market participant, colocated in the exchange, you’re not in a position to be talking about speed at all. Also most exchanges optimising for speed are not using FIX.

> is solely for amateurs

You’re not necessarily an amateur, you’re just leaving money on the table for someone else as you’ve not optimised that area of your trading infra yet.

[smabie]

I don't think you understand what quant finance is about. Almost all quant strategies don't rely on speed. In fact, HFT is usually considered a totally different space than investing (and therefore quant investing).

[egwor]

> The proprietary API is guaranteed to be slower. Yeah, most of the time that's not the case. Binary encoding/decoding is often much faster than FIX. Look at ITCH/OUCH, SBE and FastFix.

[getlawgdon]

Actually the majority of quant trading isn't dependent on speed.