"Back in 2009 when the world wasn't filled with HFT 'experts', we deconstructed the
topic of High Frequency Trading on a daily basis, and predicted not only the
flash crash, not only debacles such as the Knight trading fiasco, not only the
death of capital markets as a fund raising vehicle for companies who wish to go
public (i.e. the FaceBook IPO fiasco), but much more (all of which has yet to
pass before the stock market, as it was once known, is no more). The reason why
little if anything can and will be done to fix the persistent threat to capital
markets that is HFT is two fold: i) none of the current regulators understand
anything about modern market topology, and ii) HFT is so embedded in markets
that unrooting it would result in a complete reboot of "fair" stock valuation:
imagine what would happen to stock prices if Knight and its "buy everything"
algos were no longer present. Mass hysteria as the realization that vacauum
tubes are now TBTF.
That said it is always amusing to observe as more and more people get in on
the scam that is the "equity market", now completely dominated by
robots which do nothing but accelerate and perpetuate momentum moves - after all
it is all they can do in lieu of being able to read financials, or anticipate
events. Remember: it is always the market that makes the news, never the other
way around.
So it was entertaining and informative to read the latest recap of all events
HFT-related as narrated by Wired's Jerry Adler, whose write up "Raging
Bulls: How Wall Street Got Addicted to Light-Speed Trading" does an
admirable job of showing how not only nothing has changed since those days in
2009 full of warning, but how in fact things are moving ever faster to what will
one day be a trading singularity, limited strictly by the speed of light (and
maybe even surpassing that). Of all the things in the article, the one we found
most curious is that since 2009, the round trip from the biggest quant trading
hub in Chicago to the exchange hubs in NY and NJ, has been cut by over 50%, or
from over 13 milliseconds to just about 9 milliseconds, courtesy of Microwaves..."
at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/chicago-new-york-and-back-85-milliseconds
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