Database Reference
In-Depth Information
an expected annual growth of around 33% in this market. Similarly, the New York Stock Ex-
change (NYSE) has over 4,000 stocks registered, but if you count related financial instru-
ments, there are 1,000 times as many things to track. Each of these can have up to hundreds
of quotes per second, and that's just at this one exchange. Think of the combined volume of
sequential time-related trade data globally each day. To save the associated time series is a
daunting task, but with modern technologies and techniques, such as those described in this
book, to do so becomes feasible.
Trade data arrives so quickly that even very short time frames can show a lot of activity.
Fig-
ure 2-1
visualizes the pattern of price and volume fluctuations of a single stock during just
one minute of trading.
