Ok, so infrastructure is not the sexiest of topics. But guess what? Our society and economy could not survive without infrastructure in place. This of course includes the global financial system as well.

Here’s a good definition we found from Market Business News: “Infrastructure refers to the basic systems and services that a country or organization needs in order to function properly. For a whole nation, it includes all the physical systems such as the road and railway networks, utilities, sewage, water, telephone lines and cell towers, air control towers, bridges, etc., plus services including law enforcement, emergency services, healthcare, financial services, education, etc.”

Now you know, but what does this have to do with investing at Firstrade you ask? Well, simply put, as a self-directed investment firm, we continually need to upgrade our infrastructure and IT systems to keep providing you with the best possible tools and resources to enhance your trading experience today and for the future. That’s why in the past year alone, we have doubled our investment in the core infrastructure.

Here’s what we’ve just done:

• Completed a comprehensive infrastructure and technology upgrade of all our trading platforms and security systems. This initiative was undertaken to provide the best possible trading experience for our customers to maximize speed, execution and security.

• The initial phase of the enterprise infrastructure project has been completed with the latest multi-core processors and a high-performance network storage system that’s based on 3D-NAND flash technology. 

• The new platform can perform up to three times faster than Firstrade’s previous version, delivering up to 300,000 I/O per second. This upgrade in speed can make the critical difference in whether a trade is successful or not and can help achieve real cost savings as well.

• We’re testing multi-cloud system architecture to provide increased availability of the best cloud services.

Firstrade has long recognized that the speed and pace of trading in today’s financial markets have required the company to be consistently ahead of the curve in developing and providing leading-edge technologies. Our recent growth has been coupled with the significant investment we’ve made in technology.

We’re proud to be leading the way of our industry, but we’ll never rest on our laurels—more good news to come!