Trading Infrastructure Enters 2026 Under Pressure, Acuiti Finds

Trading and market data infrastructure is being pushed into a new phase of strain as extended trading hours, structural market changes, and rising data variability force quantitative firms to rethink how they ingest, normalize, and act on real-time information. The report, produced by Acuiti in association with Exegy, argues that firms are confronting a combination of quicker strategies, higher market data volumes, and operational complexity that traditional architectures were not designed to handle.

“Growing complexities in market structure, trading behaviour and data volumes are placing increased demands on trading infrastructure,” the report states, adding that “extended trading hours, accelerating market data volumes and the growing use of crypto within quantitative strategies are expanding the scope and complexity of modern trading environments.”

Liquidity Shifts Beyond the Traditional Session

One of the report’s central themes is that liquidity is no longer forming neatly inside legacy trading windows, undermining assumptions that have shaped how firms deploy infrastructure and staff operations.

“These findings reflect a broader, structural shift in how, when and why liquidity forms,” the report says. “Trading activity is increasingly distributed across a wider set of trading sessions and venues, challenging long-standing assumptions that liquidity is concentrated within a predictable trading window.”

The report notes that platforms have expanded trading hours and liquidity has become more fragmented across venues. It highlights that “roughly half of US equity trading activity now occurs off platform,” driven by ATSs and other non-platform venues.

As a result, firms set up to focus mainly on the US cash session may find themselves missing price signals and execution opportunities that increasingly occur overnight or outside the traditional window.

“For institutions, this shift in trading activity across venues and timezones presents challenges in sourcing liquidity,” the report adds. “Firms set up to trade exclusively in legacy trading windows may experience reduced depth and missed opportunities on traditional platforms, despite liquidity growing elsewhere across the market ecosystem.”

Takeaway: The report’s infrastructure implication is blunt: “As liquidity and price formation extend across a broader range of trading sessions and venues, firms must adapt market data infrastructure originally designed for predictable, session-based markets to operate reliably in a more continuous trading environment.”

Market Structure Changes Accelerate Data Volumes

Even without major crisis events, incremental rule changes are steadily increasing quote churn and message traffic, raising baseline stress on market data stacks.

“Market data volumes have grown steadily over the past decade, but recent market structure changes are accelerating that growth in ways that place further pressure on trading infrastructure,” the report states.

The report warns that market data systems often fail first under stress. “During periods of elevated volatility and volume, nahead three-quarters of respondents reported some level of disruption in their market data infrastructure, ranging from intermittent latency spikes to dropped data and complete outages,” it says.

In its discussion of drivers, the report points to SEC reforms around minimum pricing increments. “By allowing more granular price increments, this change increases quote churn and the number of updates that systems must ingest, normalise and distribute in real time,” it says.

It also flags complexity introduced by the changing definition of a “round lot” under Reg NMS. “The move from a fixed, 100-share, standard to price-based lot sizes requires firms to dynamically reference and apply daily reference data when processing quotes,” the report states. “What was previously a static assumption has become a variable input.”

Survey data in the report indicates many firms do not believe their front-office infrastructure is ready for the next wave of volume growth without new investment. “Fewer than one-third of respondents indicated that their current front-office infrastructure could handle anticipated volume growth without further investment,” it says.

And when asked where investment would be needed, the most frequent answer was market data processing itself. “Respondents most frequently identified market data processing, ahead of order execution, network infrastructure and algorithmic trading systems,” the report says.

Takeaway: The infrastructure implication is framed as a warning: “As market structure changes compound, firms face steadily rising market data volumes and message rates that legacy feed handling and distribution models were not built to absorb reliably.”

Burstiness, Crypto Integration, and the Latency Race

Volume growth is not the only difficulty. The report argues that unpredictability—sharp, short-lived bursts in traffic—has become a defining constraint for modern architectures.

“Steadily rising market data volumes tell only part of the infrastructure story,” it says. “Equally challenging is the increasing burstiness of market data traffic.”

The report notes that spikes can be extreme, citing one episode where “North American equities experienced data rates exceeding two times typical average levels,” while intraday volume reached “29 billion shares,” which it calls “a 190% increase over average daily volumes of approximately 10 billion shares.”

This matters because it breaks traditional capacity planning assumptions. “Average daily volume is no longer a reliable proxy for infrastructure requirements,” the report states.

Its conclusion is direct: “Modern trading architectures must be designed to absorb extreme variability and sudden bursts in data rates, not just higher average volumes. Peak load – not the mean – is now the defining constraint.”

At the identical time, crypto is becoming less isolated and more integrated into institutional workflows, expanding the “always-on” burden for infrastructure teams. “Crypto markets operate continuously, generate highly variable data flows and rely on data models that differ materially from those used in traditional asset classes,” the report says.

“As firms incorporate crypto into broader strategies, they need to support 24/7 operations while maintaining consistent performance and risk controls,” it adds.

From there, the report suggests the ecosystem may tilt toward consolidated, cross-asset infrastructure. “As firms viewk seamless access across both digital and traditional markets, infrastructure decisions will increasingly favour platforms that support unified workflows rather than those that focus on individual asset classes,” it says.

Latency remains central to competitiveness. “Survey responses show that 86% of respondents consider latency significant to their firm,” the report states.

But the more revealing point is that firms increasingly care about maintaining their relative position. “Respondents placed greater emphasis on maintaining their competitive latency position relative to other firms,” the report says, adding that “nahead 60% indicated that preserving their current latency profile” is key to staying competitive.

Takeaway: The report links this directly to trading outcomes: “To remain competitive, quantitative trading firms must adopt market data architectures that preserve latency and reliability under increasing load and volatility, as infrastructure limitations increasingly translate directly into missed opportunities and competitive diupsetvantage.”