Using Exchange Sub-Accounts to Separate Institutional Trading Desks and APIs
Summary
The document describes how an institutional trading firm can use a master account and multiple sub-accounts to organize desks, strategies, capital, and API credentials. Separate accounts can make it easier to attribute positions and activity, assign teams, configure permissions, and reduce overlap between market making, arbitrage, hedging, quantitative systems, and longer-term portfolios. The master account retains oversight, while delegated sub-accounts can manage their own API keys when permitted.
It also explains that eligible users can allocate API request capacity across sub-account UIDs, giving more capacity to systems with heavier workloads and less to slower desks. The article lists tier-dependent rate limits and describes access to dedicated infrastructure for eligible clients. These are exchange-specific product details, with eligibility and limits subject to change. The document explains an operational architecture rather than measuring execution quality or demonstrating that account separation improves trading performance; firms would still need to assess their own controls, technical needs, and applicable requirements.
Key ideas
- Sub-accounts can separate desks, strategies, capital pools, and trading activity under a master account.
- Dedicated API credentials and permissions can help isolate automated systems and assign access by team.
- Eligible users can distribute API request quotas across sub-accounts according to workload.
- The master account retains oversight of sub-account API keys and the broader account structure.
- Rate limits and dedicated infrastructure depend on eligibility and may change over time.
Tags
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.