The general architecture of a trading application

Now, we can improve our initial diagram (see Figure 1.1) representing the architecture of a trading application. Although it is still very general and high level, it now radically differs from what we suggested in the beginning:

Figure 1.3 – More complete general architecture of a trading app

Here, we can see that the real trading application features a number of blocks or modules, and some of them receive feedback from others. After we have received market data, we should clean it up and add storage and retrieval facilities, as pieces of data may be reused in the following code. Then, we generate trading signals according to the strategy logic. But before sending these signals to the market in the form of orders, we should do some checks to make sure that the order size is comfortable for both the strategy and the market. After that, we actually trade – send orders to the market controlling their execution. And finally, we track the open positions and manage exposure according to the running profit or loss.