Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the KX Capital Market Summit. Following an invitation of my friends at KX, I joined market participants and other KDB/Q developers for a day full of keynote presentations, real-world use cases of KX products, and engaging networking sessions with fellow KDB/Q enthusiasts.

This summit was one of the standout highlights of the year for me, as I was thrilled to hear about the latest advancements at KX, learn how market participants and industry experts leverage KDB/Q to gain a competitive edge, and see KXperts showcase innovative solutions they’ve been working on. On a personal note, it was also a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with KDB/Q developers I hadn’t seen in a while and catch up with my friends at KX. It’s an event I wouldn’t have missed for the world!

Last week, in a groundbreaking move, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) revealed plans to extend after-hours trading on its Arca electronic exchange. Pending regulatory approval, this would expand Arca's operating hours from 1:30 a.m. ET to 11:30 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, offering 22 hours of trading each weekday. This development follows other major exchange announcements this year, the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE Group), backed by BlackRock and Citadel Securities. To learn more about how these changes could reshape the electronic trading landscape, keep reading below.

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored or paid blog post. I attended Quant Strats purely out of my passion and interest in Quantitative Finance and related topics. I frequently participate in meet-ups, conferences, presentations, and workshops focused on finance, quantitative finance, technology, FinTech, and crypto, driven by curiosity and enthusiasm. After all, it’s the field I work in.

Introduction

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend QuantStrats 2024 in London, one of the most highly anticipated quantitative finance conferences of the year. After a successful debut in New York last year, QuantStrats made its first appearance in the heart of the City of London, one of the world’s most historic financial hubs. While I'm sure you're eager to hear about the discussions, this post won’t be a recap of the event. Instead, I’ll focus on what made QuantStrats such a standout conference and why you should consider attending in the future if you get the chance.

Throughout my career, I've had hundreds of interviews with investment banks, hedge funds, startups, and tech companies. Some were successful, others less so. I've also been on the other side of the table, interviewing candidates. Additionally, I've prepared several candidates for their interviews, all of whom successfully landed jobs. In this blog post, I want to share my tips on how to best prepare for an interview and boost your chances of landing your dream job.

One year ago, on my birthday, I launched DefconQ — a KDB/Q-focused blog aimed at helping developers and KDB/Q newcomers enhance their skills or get started with the language. What began as a small personal project to motivate myself to deepen my KDB/Q knowledge quickly evolved into a valuable resource for the KDB community. I never anticipated the level of popularity, feedback, and support the blog would receive. As DefconQ celebrates its first anniversary today, I want to share some key milestones and extend my gratitude to everyone who has supported DefconQ in any way — whether by reading the posts, liking or sharing the content, providing me with a platform to share my knowledge, or supporting the project in other ways. Read on to discover the milestones DefconQ has achieved and what's in store for the future.

A little over a year ago, KX introduced the KXperts a team of KX developers with deep passion and expertise in KDB/Q and vector databases. Their main goal is to help developers become more proficient with KX technologies, such as KDB/Q, KDB.AI, KDB Insights, PyKX and more. The team currently consists of Michaela Woods, Michael Ryaboy, Ryan Siegler, Laura Kerr, and Megan McParland, and I've had the pleasure of meeting and collaborating with most of them. The KXperts have produced a series of videos, technical blogs, tutorials, and online courses for the KX Academy, and they host live streams and meetups, all aimed at building a robust KX community.

Recently, I had the pleasure of being invited by Michaela Woods to join her and Cynthia Faus Viadé on the KX LiveStream to discuss best practices in designing your KDB/Q Tick Architecture. We began by exploring the new KDB/Q Architecture course launched recently by KX, starting with a plain vanilla tick setup and gradually progressing to more advanced configurations. Our discussion covered a range of topics including Derived Analytics, Load Balancing and Gateways, Disaster Recovery, Slow Consumers and Chained Tickerplants, as well as Intraday Writedowns and Database Best Practices. Below is a summary of our discussion, or you can watch the recording of the livestream on YouTube.

When developers first encounter KDB/Q, they are often intimidated by its "strange" syntax, which differs significantly from most other programming languages they've seen. However, understanding and familiarizing oneself with the syntax is merely the beginning. To truly master any programming language, one needs a deep understanding of its core concepts and paradigms. For instance, when learning object-oriented languages like Java or C++, you should focus on concepts such as inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, and data abstraction. Additionally, understanding pointers and memory allocation is crucial for mastering C++. The same principle applies to KDB/Q, a high-performance, in-memory database and programming language. In this blog post, I will share the seven most important concepts that will set you apart and enhance your skills as a KDB/Q developer. Understanding these concepts will provide insight into why KDB/Q is so powerful and favoured among quants and data enthusiasts.

In this blog post, I have a special treat for you. I sat down with Dimitri Bianco a seasoned quant who runs his own podcast and YouTube channel dedicated to all things quant finance. I have been following Dimitri for a while and always found his podcasts incredibly informative and helpful, so when the opportunity to join him on a podcast and discuss KDB/Q came up, I couldn't turn it down. Dimitri’s engagement provides graduates and students at the start of their careers with valuable insights to help them choose the right path. While I had to figure most things out on my own, Dimitri's podcast offers a valuable industry perspective into the field of quantitative finance.

Welcome back, fellow KDB/Q enthusiasts! If you've been following my blog journey, you've likely come across one of my earlier posts where I shared my favorite Go To KDB/Q Learning Resources aimed at beginners for diving into the world of KDB/Q. Congratulations on your progress thus far! Now, as seasoned learners in this domain, it's time to elevate our understanding further. In this latest post, we're shifting gears to focus on more advanced learning material. Whether you're looking to deepen your expertise or explore new horizons, join me as we explore advanced resources to expand your KDB/Q knowledge.