41–50 of 93 posts
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That would make markets less efficient and thus allocate capital in a worse manner.
Less efficient for literally 50 ms. Then it all balances out.
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It's disgusting to me that that much brainpower was/is dedicated to stock trading. All that programming and the only thing we get for it is that we can correctly value a company.
> It's disgusting to me that that much brainpower was/is dedicated to stock trading. s/stock trading/advertising.
If the market is so efficient why are so many people working in it? The answer is it's parasitic. They don't allocate capital efficiently, progress has slowed dramatically in the west and a culture of rent seeking has taken over. It's a huge misallocation of resources but of course people simply point to the fact that they are "making money" as a sign of success. And yes, they are indeed "making money". That is the p…
Market efficiency and the number of humans involved are unrelated. When people talk about market efficiency they are talking about the markets ability to quickly allocate capital where it is needed at a "fair" price. I think the comments about the industry being largely parasitic are generally correct. They real issue is that if there is a 100 billion dollar transaction taking place and you can make that happen 1% mo…
In an efficient market there's "no free lunch"--because somebody else comes along and eats it. If the financial sector were efficient, competition would drive down profits.
This is in fact happening to some extent with passively-managed index funds like Vanguard taking up a larger and larger share of investors' deposits, but it's been a surprisingly slow process.
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Not going to comment specifically on the judgement (I agree in general terms). However that is a vast mis-understanding of what a lot of the brain power at an investment bank goes towards. It isn't just equities it is fixed-income and economics as well. But beyond that it isn't just about valuation. It is everything from working on how to actually clear transactions, building dark pools and similar platforms, researc…
Right, but all of what they are doing is self-serving. They develop these things to give their client portfolios an edge over other investment firms. They aren't developing these technologies to apply them to healthcare or general science, it's just to give them an edge in the investment business. For a company of their size and wealth, their open source contributions are paltry. A handy way to deal with arrays in Ja…
"The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates."
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Not going to comment specifically on the judgement (I agree in general terms). However that is a vast mis-understanding of what a lot of the brain power at an investment bank goes towards. It isn't just equities it is fixed-income and economics as well. But beyond that it isn't just about valuation. It is everything from working on how to actually clear transactions, building dark pools and similar platforms, researc…
Right, but all of what they are doing is self-serving. They develop these things to give their client portfolios an edge over other investment firms. They aren't developing these technologies to apply them to healthcare or general science, it's just to give them an edge in the investment business. For a company of their size and wealth, their open source contributions are paltry. A handy way to deal with arrays in Ja…
One thing HN might care about: 3 years ago, 25% of Goldman employees worked in the IT division. They probably had more developers than Facebook and LinkedIn combined. http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-has-more-engine...
It's disgusting to me that that much brainpower was/is dedicated to stock trading. All that programming and the only thing we get for it is that we can correctly value a company.
If the market is so efficient why are so many people working in it? The answer is it's parasitic. They don't allocate capital efficiently, progress has slowed dramatically in the west and a culture of rent seeking has taken over. It's a huge misallocation of resources but of course people simply point to the fact that they are "making money" as a sign of success. And yes, they are indeed "making money". That is the p…
While I agree its parasitic, I dont think its the end of the world. Its more like they are taking all of the cream from the milk, and just delivering skim milk to consumers with out telling them. People notice the milk is different, but can't quite put a finger on it. Its just part of the problem with income inequality.
One thing HN might care about: 3 years ago, 25% of Goldman employees worked in the IT division. They probably had more developers than Facebook and LinkedIn combined. http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-has-more-engine...
It's disgusting to me that that much brainpower was/is dedicated to stock trading. All that programming and the only thing we get for it is that we can correctly value a company.
If there is a prevalent sentiment that too many companies are starting up in the valley with nonsensical business models, how can we say with the straight eye that more programmers are needed to be shifted to create even more companies.