On February 10-14, 2014, Vice Dean and Associate Professor at Vilnius University Kaunas Faculty of Humanities Dr. Saulius Masteika participated in a report HPC Finance (Training in Modern Quantitative Methods and High-Performance Computing for Finance) project meeting in Edinburgh. As a representative of an associated partner of the international project, he was invited by the HPC Finance coordinator Prof. Juho Kanniainen (Tampere University of Technology).
Vilnius University Kaunas Faculty of Humanities has the rights of an associated partner in this international project. The project whose participants carry out research in the field of finance informatics is funded by the EU funds on the basis of the Marie Curie Actions programme. This year, the representative of the Faculty in the project was Assoc. Prof. Dr. S. Masteika who continues the activities started by Professor S. Girdzijauskas. The following institutions are participants of the project: Maastricht University (Holland), Tampere University of Technology (Finland), Aarhus University (Denmark), the University of Manchester (England), Abo Akademi University (Finland), Vilnius University (Lithuania). The following financial institutions also participate in the project: Moody’s Analytics, Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, Citigroup, Lloyds Group, Willis, and business companies that provide computer technology solutions for banks: Cambridge Systems Associates Ltd., Techila, Numerical Algorithms Group and others.
During the report meeting, experts from the EU were presented the results of current scientific research. Moreover, the meeting was a good place to plan possibilities for PhD students who participate in the project for traineeship in academic and business institutions abroad. According to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Saulius Masteika, Vilnius University Kaunas Faculty of Humanities is tentatively planning visits of several PhD students from Finland and England; during these visits, research works related to the testing of HFT (High Frequency Trading) strategies than increase market liquidity will be carried out.
Computer calculations within the Finance sector is the main topic of the HPC Finance.eu
During the second part of the scientific visit, Assoc. Prof. Dr. S. Masteika participated in the HPC Finance.eu conference in London which took place in the conference rooms that belong to Lloyds Group bank and Willis insurance company. The general discussion welcomed representatives of different countries from academic institutions that carry out research in the field of finance informatics, from banks and insurance companies that manage investments and carry out investment deals, and from technological sector companies that service information systems in financial institutions. The organiser and main chairperson of the conference was emeritus professor at the Cambridge University, Financial Research Centre Michael Dempster.
During the discussion, the participants of the conference looked for possible technological solutions as to how bank and insurance companies could solve problems emerging due to the fact that financial data flow, frequency and speed of trade deal implementation are rapidly increasing. Associate Professor Saulius Masteika says that discussions were a means to figure out the answer to the question of what computer architecture and programming tools should be applied in order to process the data flow that consists of 40 billion records a day and generates 20 TB of data. A similar flow of information is generated in the options deals market alone.
During the conference the emphasis was put on the fact that the modern abundance of financial instruments (CFD, ETF, future deals, shares, debt paper currency, options deals, etc.), stochastic financial markets and investment strategies is becoming an especially relevant field of information technologies and finance informatics. “The real time parallel computation of 10 thousand strategies with a frequency of milliseconds cannot be solved by applying common information technologies. Technological solutions are searched by not only academic institutions, but also JP Morgan, Citibank, Allianz, Bloomberg, Credit Suisse and other financial institutions whose representatives shared their experience during the HPC Finance.eu conference”, said Assoc. Prof. Dr. Saulius Masteika. Scientists and practicians are encouraged to maintain intensive collaboration due to the relation between financial markets and modern information technologies; this relation is obvious and inevitable. Thus, the associate professor is glad that the staff of the Department of Informatics and Vilnius University Kaunas Faculty of Humanities have an opportunity to participate in this type of international discussions and research.
More information at: http://www.hpcfinance.eu/