High-load trading and how to handle it for the best performance

If there’s one highly dynamic environment, it is the trading world. Intense market pressures are a daily occurrence, and many risks must be reduced and controlled to maintain optimal performance and reliability. 

Among all possible risks, the ones that occur during peak trading hours present the most significant challenge. Whether triggered by scheduled events—such as NFP or CPI report releases—or by sudden occurrences and market shocks that create an unpredictable surge in daily trading, peak trading hours are both exciting and nerve-racking. The price of a mistake is very high, every component of the trading infrastructure is operating at capacity, and high-quality experience is as critical as it gets—as trading spikes naturally attract new clients to your brokerage, creating an opportunity to expand your client base if they end up enjoying your service. 

Real challenges in high-load trading

Everyone says that high-load trading is challenging, but what are those challenges?

While specifics of the challenges vary depending on one’s platform configuration, the core issues are more or less universal and follow a consistent pattern during high-load events.

• Traders open and close their deals rapidly, sometimes multiple times per second.
• The surge in requests overwhelms trading servers and related components. 
• Execution latency increases at every endpoint, resulting in delayed order execution.
• The quotes flow is being delayed, causing missed or erroneous opportunities.
• Profit calculation discrepancies arise due to data inconsistencies and/or timing.
• Liquidity providers start rejecting orders due to insufficient margin or depleted liquidity. 
• Slippages, timeouts, and even the failure of environment components lead to downtime.

What happens next? Business workflow disruption, financial discrepancies, dissatisfied clients, and damaged reputation. 

How Tools for Brokers addresses high-load risks

Minimising risks and their impact on brokers is the core specialisation of Tools for Brokers. We are firm believers that the key to managing high-load trading effectively lies in the proper infrastructure and instruments. 

Here are the key strategies and mechanisms we use to help our clients build resilience, whether they face high volatility on a daily basis or only occasionally. 

Smart routing and scheduling 

Market volatility and trading volume often increase during the so-called power hours. 

To handle these power hours effectively, it’s necessary to set automated responses to avoid manual errors and delays. In Trade Processor—TFB’s liquidity bridge and margin engine—we’ve implemented Profiles with a predefined routing scheduler to be applied automatically right when you need it. 

Brokers can fully customise these Profiles to cover the most common scenarios and needs. 

Distributed architecture

Distributed architecture means that different components of your solutions are installed on separate servers and/or locations to balance the load on the system and minimise downtime risks. If one component goes down, the rest of the infrastructure is unaffected. 

The best practice here is to prepare the failover for all mission-critical components, including the trading platform, liquidity providers, and the liquidity bridge. A well-thought-out failover plan can make the difference between a minor delay in service and bankruptcy caused by a costly outage. 

Backup liquidity providers 

Just like you want to have a backup copy of all your critical data, you also want to have backup options when it comes to liquidity providers. 

There are many reasons why your primary and trusted liquidity provider of choice may fail. If that ever happens, the nuances of the issues won’t really concern you. What you’ll be focused on is the urgent rerouting of your orders to minimise financial and reputational losses. To avoid unnecessary stress and mitigate this unpleasant situation as soon as possible, Trade Processor users can select backup liquidity providers—Backup LPs—where the trading flow will be automatically redirected, ensuring a smooth execution process. 

Proactive risk management to maintain margins and profitability

Risk controls are crucial during turbulent market times.

• Automatic switches between different execution modules triggered by sharp price and P&L fluctuations.
• Dynamic routing rules shifting temporarily between B-Book and A-Book to mitigate exposure and the probability of high losses. 
• BBI patterns help identify malicious activities—such as scalping—that generate most of the requests and overwhelm the infrastructure, resulting in a decrease in performance.
• The integration of advanced risk management solutions— such as those provided by the TFB Toolbox—directly into MetaTrader enables the fastest reaction and timely intervention. 

Monitoring and early detection

Before we sign off, it’s worth noting that effective risk prevention is closely tied to proactive monitoring.

Yes, monitoring and tracking the health of your environment is not the most enjoyable task one can imagine. And the temptation to push it off and put it on the back burner is very high. 

Yet, the majority of large-scale disasters that happen to companies’ IT infrastructure can be either entirely or partially prevented and mitigated. How? With timely monitoring!

The TFB monitoring system enables the early detection of issues affecting both server structure and trading activity. It enhances the reliability of the enterprise by offering 120 metrics to detect system failures and abnormal behaviour before high-load trading is in place. 

Just as with personal health, it is always better, easier, and more effective to address issues proactively and prevent them from occurring. If you’re curious but unsure where to start, email us at sales@t4b.com, and we’d be happy to provide you with custom guidelines tailored to your environment’s safety.

Final thoughts

High-load trading is a continuous stress test for brokerage infrastructures. To handle it effectively, your environment must be prepared in advance to withstand sudden spikes in activity without sacrificing performance. 

Employing the right set of solutions doesn’t just boost the reliability of your brand, but also reassures clients that they are trading with a partner they can trust, even during the most volatile periods.