The most expensive commercial real estate in the world isn’t office space in Boston, London or Hong Kong. In fact, it isn’t office space at all—it’s a data center.
A data center in Chicago, paid for by high-frequency traders, commands a price of $4,000 per square foot. It’s used to power security exchanges like the Chicago Board Options Exchange and also to make thousands of trades per second based on computer generated algorithms.
The high price of this real estate can be attributed to the proximity between the exchanges’ servers and the traders’ servers. While online communication may seem instantaneous, a fraction of a second can make all the difference in the world for these high-frequency traders.
(Via Larry Cheng)
