ITCH is an ultra-low latency protocol for accessing Market Data. ITCH has been developed to maximize performance and to meet the requirements of latency sensitive trading strategies. Connecting via ITCH protocol makes it possible to get quotes directly from the exchange without losing speed and with the maximum possible frequency of data acquisition.
Because ITCH feeds are consumed at line rate, gaps, sequence errors and feed slowdowns are easiest to detect on the wire rather than inside the application. That is the role of market data analytics, which measures feed quality and latency independently of the trading system consuming it.
