Recent events in the UAE were a reminder of how quickly global developments can ripple through financial markets. As news emerged over the weekend, attention rightly focused on the safety and well-being of those in the region. For market infrastructure teams, another question also formed: How will markets respond when trading resumes?

Market volatility doesn’t just move prices. It moves infrastructure.

When global events create uncertainty, trading activity accelerates rapidly. Message volumes surge, update rates spike, and systems that operate comfortably during normal conditions can suddenly approach operational limits. On paper, this isn’t new. What is new is the scale and frequency of modern volatility.

Over the past decade, market data traffic has grown dramatically. Similar patterns have been observed during major market events, including the volatility surrounding Liberation Day (2025), when market data traffic surged across multiple trading environments, pushing infrastructure to levels rarely seen under normal trading conditions.

For infrastructure teams, the challenge is not just handling peak volume. It is tracking peaks as they form in real-time and providing immediate in-the-day analysis for senior trade-floor leads, application owners, IT executives, and, increasingly, the board.

What Happens When Market Data Volumes Exceed Forecasts?

During the most recent trading session following the UAE events, one environment monitored through MosaicOA processed over 270 billion market data messages in a single trading session. To understand the scale, compare it with recent historical baselines:

• Pre-COVID: 65 billion messages per day on average.
• COVID volatility: Increased to about 115 billion messages per day.
• Prior historical peak: 2025’s Liberation Day, 254 billion messages.
• Previous trading session: Approximately 199 billion messages.

Earlier daily projections suggested around 225 billion messages. Those projections quickly became irrelevant.

As volatility intensified during the trading session, several sudden spikes pushed volumes far beyond predictions, ultimately surpassing both the forecast and the previous historical record. MosaicOA monitored these changes in real time throughout the day, continuously recalculating projections and providing immediate views of live infrastructure capacity and utilisation.

Why Does Traditional Capacity Management Fail Under Volatility?

For many firms, a dedicated capacity management capability is still treated as a luxury. Even where tools exist, they are often limited to basic monitoring, rather than storing the detailed historical data needed to support meaningful capacity analysis.

Traditionally, capacity planning is performed infrequently, typically during infrastructure upgrades or as part of post-event reviews. Forecasting models tend to focus on long-term projections measured in months or years. This approach no longer reflects the realities of modern market data environments.

By the time traditional techniques identify capacity pressure, systems that appear healthy on paper may already be functioning close to operational limits. In volatile markets, reaction time matters.

How Does Real-Time “Busy Day” Monitoring Preserve Resilience?

Within MosaicOA, capacity behaviour is analysed using real-time “busy day” monitoring. Instead of reviewing activity after an event, Mosaic continuously evaluates current system behaviour against historical patterns for the same point in the trading session. This distinction matters because market data traffic follows strong intraday patterns. Activity during the market open behaves very differently from midday trading or closing auctions.

By comparing current activity with historical norms at the same moment in the trading session, operations teams can spot abnormal behaviour as it develops – without waiting for end-of-day reports – and allows teams to see when:

• Message volumes begin to exceed historical peaks.
• Traffic accelerates unexpectedly.
• Infrastructure utilisation approaches operational thresholds.

Instead of discovering market data system stress after an event, teams can observe pressure building in real time.

mosaicOA: Market Data Message Volume

In the example above, mosaicOA shows historical activity alongside the current trading session. As volatility increased throughout the day, message volumes were recorded and displayed in real-time. Additional dashboards performed predictive calculations based on historical behaviour.

On 03/03/2026, these projections shifted dramatically throughout the day, ultimately reaching 270 billion messages.

Operational Resilience Requires Visibility and Observability

Capacity planning is essential. Systems and their underlying infrastructure must be designed with enough headroom to absorb volatile trading conditions. But resilience is not only about capacity. It is also about observable visibility.

Organisations that understand how their infrastructure behaves relative to historical norms gain a significant operational advantage. They can identify abnormal behaviour early and respond before operational risk escalates.

Even with sophisticated monitoring tools, start-of-day projections can become obsolete within hours during volatile trading sessions. Those precious intraday minutes of foresight often make the difference between maintaining stability and experiencing an outage.

Events do not wait patiently for you to upgrade.

How CJC Can Help

If your market data estate is seeing higher peaks, faster ramps, or more frequent “busy days,” your in-house teams do not have to tackle it alone. The 24/7 teams at CJC can help you move from a reactive posture to proactive monitoring, for real-time capacity control and help you build visibility, resilience, and response capacity, without forcing a one-size-fits-all operating model:

If you want to pressure-test your current capacity assumptions or build real-time visibility that stands up when volatility hits, the CJCIT team can help you assess gaps quickly and define a pragmatic roadmap.