Dominic Damoah is the founder
In the realm of high finance, the name "Sikadua HFT" is resonating like a force to be reckoned with.
This is because this revolutionary high-frequency trading platform is leaving its competitors in Ghana in the dust.
Founded by entrepreneur, Dominic Damoah, Sikadua HFT stands tall as one of the only computerized trading software companies to have ever emerged from the vibrant West African nation.
As a software engineer extraordinaire, Dominic embarked on this exciting journey into the world of forex trading in 2019.
Driven by his innate passion for innovation, he sought to revolutionize the industry by developing automated ways to navigate complex and dynamic financial markets.
With an unwavering determination to carve a niche for Ghana in the global financial landscape, Dominic set out to create a high-frequency trading platform that would capitalize on the cutting-edge technology available at his fingertips.
His dedication to excellence paid off when Sikadua HFT was born, making waves as a pioneer in computerized trading software companies within the nation.
“Sikadua HFT is a high frequency trading platform that is built around the latency arbitrage technique. High frequency trading is a type of trading that only computers can do.
“This is the type of trading that I came across after building expert advisors and indicators for the MetaTrader platform. In the year 2019, my dad and I were introduced to the world of forex trading, or retail forex trading and being a software engineer already, I was automatically drawn to building automated ways to trade the markets.
“If you are not familiar with the Ghana Stock Market, it is where you go and buy stocks of companies. However, forex is a place where you can exchange whatever currency you're allowed to trade in for other currencies and some of these forex trading platforms actually allow you to go beyond currencies. They allow you to trade precious metals, trade cryptocurrency, or even trade stocks,” Dominic explained.
He continued that; “A very important distinction between the stock market and the forex market is the fact that the stock market is a centralized system. The most popular stock market is actually the New York Stock Exchange.
“There are other ones around the world but it's the most popular one. It's the one where people trade daily. There are stocks like Tesla, Microsoft and others,” he added.
According to Dominic, what sets Sikadua HFT apart is its mastery of the game-changing strategy known as latency arbitrage.
Latency arbitrage is the art of exploiting the time delays between trading centers, effectively enabling the platform to glimpse into the future.
This groundbreaking technique provides traders with an unparalleled advantage, allowing them to execute trades at optimal prices even before the market updates become available to the average investor.
By seamlessly connecting to liquidity providers and slow forex brokers, Sikadua HFT scans the market with unparalleled speed, detecting arbitrage opportunities that leave traditional human traders in awe.
Dominic said his brainchild cracked the code to see the future and make the impossible a reality, positioning Ghana at the forefront of high-frequency trading on the global stage.
“In 2019, I spent my time studying exactly what it was, and I ended up building expert advisors or trading robots for the MetaTrader system. MetaTrader was basically the trader's software that could be used to connect to your broker.
“For those who do not know, the broker is the company that enables you to get access to the markets and the way the broker does it is that it basically has a price engine where they provide prices for their customers and the customers make their trading decisions based on those prices.
“In the beginning, what I did was to build automated trading systems that had some logic in them. They could check a few technical indicators, place a buy trade or sell trade, but like most systems that existed, there was just eminent failure.
“It wasn't working right because the markets are always changing, and you can't really predict the markets. Nonetheless, I came across a very important friend in my career, and he introduced me to the Realm High Frequency Trading.
“Now, it's very important to note and understand that as humans, when we become traders, typically we sit behind a computer. You have a terminal in front of you. You have a buy and a sell button and when you're ready to buy, you hit that button. You tell the computer how many units of that instrument you want to buy. The order gets executed and then you wait for history or you wait for the future to unfold.”
Diving into his breakthrough, Dominic said, the time spent in sending a request over the internet, or for a server to process a request was about 3 seconds and that had to be cut down further to prevent traders from making a loss.
“It is a fact that computers are operating at timescales that human beings cannot even imagine. One of those timescales is the millisecond timescale. So, believe it or not, three seconds is 3000 milliseconds.
“This means 1000 milliseconds make 1 second. Therefore, if a computer technically had the ability to execute something every millisecond, the computer could do or perform a task every one millisecond, 1000 times before we can snap our fingers.
“So this friend of mine introduced me to Latency Arbitrage. And this is a form of high frequency trading that enables you to see the future as you may want to put it. And that is just priceless.
“Latency Arbitrage exploits or takes advantage of the fact that the forex system or the forex markets are decentralized. Each and every broker has something known as a liquidity provider connected to them.
“That liquidity provider is the origin of the price information that you're going to see eventually on your terminal. So the broker is acting like a middleman. If you had the funds and you had the right clearance, you could hypothetically connect directly to the liquidity provider and get the price information.
“And once we can do that, we can listen to prices on the liquidity provider and then execute trades on a slow broker. And that is the entire premises for latency arbitrage.
“This is the concept behind the Sikadua HFT platform. This is a platform that exists today. This is a platform that I built in 2019.”
It is obvious that Dominic Damoah, the mastermind behind Sikadua HFT, has emerged as a true trailblazer in finance technology.
His relentless pursuit of innovation and excellence has earned him accolades and recognition within Ghana's tech community.
Currently, his name is synonymous with technological advancement and groundbreaking achievements in the financial landscape.
“There are many other platforms that have been created. However, what makes Sikadua HFT stand out is how lightweight it is and how fast you're able to get started and basically get up and running with your high frequency trading system ready to make money.
“If you get all the parameters right, you could potentially have a completely risk free trading system that can make you millions of dollars once you've set it up correctly. That is not to say that Sikadua HFT was not met with challenges,” he clarified.
Dominic added that, “There are many brokers nowadays that have implemented software to combat this type of trading. They do not like it. Nowhere is it stated to be illegal. This is an innovative form of trading that happens all the time.
“And to combat that, Sikadua HFT has some methods and some techniques that have been implemented to help evade those kind of detection algorithms that are supposed to detect high frequency trading behavior and make it difficult.
“Nonetheless, this is a platform that I created in 2019. It is a platform that I'm very proud of, a platform that is one of a kind, I'm sure. It's the only high frequency trading platform in Ghana, as far as I know.”
Already, Sikadua HFT has sparked a revolution in the Ghanaian financial industry, captivating the attention of investors, entrepreneurs, and traders alike. The platform's unique ability to execute hundreds of trades within milliseconds has left competitors in awe, solidifying its position as the go-to high-frequency trading platform in the nation.
Despite the challenges posed by the complex and ever-evolving world of trading, Dominic Damoah and Sikadua HFT have risen above the rest. Their platform operates with remarkable efficiency, enabling traders to execute strategic moves with lightning speed, leaving no room for human error.
“Latency arbitrage enables you to look at prices in the future and take advantage of them now. Human beings are accustomed to the seconds and sometimes millisecond timescale.
“We know how long a second is. We know how long 5 seconds is. If I give you 5 seconds to log out of your phone and lock it, you'll count it just like this. 12345. That's our default timing zone.
“That's the timing zone we grew up with. That's the timing zone that you'll find people in a gym using. That's just what it is. That's where we operate most trading terminals, and I'm talking about MetaTrader and Jtrader and other trading platforms that display prices to manual traders or humans.
“But humans being accustomed to seconds are not accustomed to millisecond, let alone microsecond to even talk of nanoseconds. That is a territory that only computers can operate in.
“So what that means is that if you can learn about price changes early on in this time spectrum, from zero milliseconds all the way through 200 milliseconds, the price can change within that small period of time.
“However, this cannot all happen at the same trading center.
“Therefore, in order to make latency arbitrage possible, you're going to need two trading centers. So with these two trading centers, we have two designations. The first designation is the slow trading center or the slow broker.
“And we have the fast trading center or the fast broker. So as you may have already deduced by this point, the slow broker or the slow trading center is where you're going to be placing trades. And you're going to be taking your signals from the fast broker, because the fast broker can provide you prices way faster at a faster rate than the slow broker.
“What you're going to do is you're going to monitor the fast broker and you're going to look for a gap, you're going to look for a certain number of price points that you are willing to take advantage of and that decision would be made based off of the market conditions.
“The reason that happens is because unlike the stock market, the forex market is decentralized forex trading.
“So this is a pretty ingenious method of trading that only computers can do and this is a system that I implemented in the form of a net application that takes advantage of the MTA API protocol.
“You can find that at Mtapi tech. Essentially, what it does is it automatically and through a network connection, establishes a connection with a MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5 server, which is the slow broker, while simultaneously establishing a connection with a liquidity provider, for example, LMAX, then the platform waits for a given gap event to take place, and once the gap events take place, a trade is placed, or a trigger causes the correct trade to be placed and profit is made.
As Sikadua HFT continues to soar, it is evident that Dominic Damoah's creation is destined to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of finance in Ghana. With the platform's potential to unlock unprecedented opportunities for profit, it has attracted attention from international investors seeking to tap into the power of Ghana's financial innovation.
“I have sold two copies to two companies. One in Russia and one in Italy. The reason why it is not a lot is because people do not understand it.
“This is a very niche market, and also it costs a lot. It's not cheap. There are many other platforms that have been created. However, what makes Sikadua HFT stand out is how lightweight it is and how fast you're able to get started and if you get all the parameters right, you could potentially have a completely risk free trading system.”
As the curtains rise on a new era of financial brilliance, Sikadua HFT shines as a beacon of Ghana's prowess in technological advancements.
Dominic Damoah's genius has etched an indelible mark in the annals of high-frequency trading, raising the bar for computerized trading software companies not only in Ghana but across the globe.
In the end, it is clear that Dominic Damoah's Sikadua HFT has carved its place among the giants of finance technology.
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Its impact on the trading world in Ghana and beyond will continue to reverberate, leaving an enduring legacy for generations to come.
The journey has just begun, and with Dominic at the helm, the sky is truly the limit for Sikadua HFT.
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