Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery • Hacker News Board

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#71

Post by joezydeco » Wed, May 09, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

vasilipupkin wrote: post #54

i have one question: why expend some much energy on unearthing obscure stuff that has relevance only to a very small subset of a very small industry and literally nobody else? seems like a waste of effort.

Perhaps because that very small subset of a very small industry can have a major impact on the entire global economy when something goes off plan?

It also hints at how much money is actually in play with these "very small" companies. If they're spending hundreds of millions to get an edge (sometimes in picoseconds) on the competition, what does that say about the magnitude of the money they are working with and willing to risk?

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#72

Post by alexpil » Wed, May 09, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

ropeadopepope wrote: post #49

Does anybody know what happened to Windy Apple Technologies? They promised the lowest latency microwave connection from NY to Chicago, then promptly disappeared...

I'm still around and in the industry.

Never promised the lowest latency, but I was the first one by two years to build NYChicago.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#73

Post by mturmon » Wed, May 09, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

IndexicalDemon wrote: post #62

jlgaddis wrote: post #58

I'm not even remotely involved with the HFT world, but I can't think of any good reason why they'd want to receive "shortwave" signals from Europe in Chicago. Short-haul microwave links for low latency and high bandwidth, yes, but at shortwave frequencies you are literally talking about BITS per second. TFA says "Think dialup speeds" but this is lower than even dialup! They certainly aren't receiving any meaningful a…

The crucial information is up and down ticks of the ES-mini futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. These lead the S&P500 (SPY) index funding in NYC (by 4 milliseconds), and the ES-mini ticks up and down about once per second. This few bits of information carries huge value since much of the world's equity market responds to it. See https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.5966

Great link, thank you. Abstract in case it piques people's interest:

"High frequency trading has led to widespread efforts to reduce information propagation delays between physically distant exchanges. Using relativistically correct millisecond-resolution tick data, we document a 3-millisecond decrease in one-way communication time between the Chicago and New York areas that has occurred from April 27th, 2010 to August 17th, 2012. We attribute the first segment of this decline to the introduction of a latency-optimized fiber optic connection in late 2010. A second phase of latency decrease can be attributed to line-of-sight microwave networks, operating primarily in the 6-11 GHz region of the spectrum, licensed during 2011 and 2012. Using publicly available information, we estimate these networks’ latencies and bandwidths. We estimate the total infrastructure and 5-year operations costs associated with these latency improvements to exceed $500 million."

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#74

Post by vasilipupkin » Wed, May 09, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #71

vasilipupkin wrote: post #54

i have one question: why expend some much energy on unearthing obscure stuff that has relevance only to a very small subset of a very small industry and literally nobody else? seems like a waste of effort.

Perhaps because that very small subset of a very small industry can have a major impact on the entire global economy when something goes off plan? It also hints at how much money is actually in play with these "very small" companies. If they're spending hundreds of millions to get an edge (sometimes in picoseconds ) on the competition, what does that say about the magnitude of the money they are working with and will…

"Perhaps because that very small subset of a very small industry can have a major impact on the entire global economy when something goes off plan?"

this is a red herring. this specific article in no way discusses or addresses how this would happen, nor does it tie in relevance of shortwave to this specific point

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#75

Post by vasilipupkin » Wed, May 09, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

jlgaddis wrote: post #61

vasilipupkin wrote: post #54

i have one question: why expend some much energy on unearthing obscure stuff that has relevance only to a very small subset of a very small industry and literally nobody else? seems like a waste of effort.

Because it's interesting to someone. I don't understand why my girlfriend likes to watch Youtube videos of other girls doing their make-up and hair but, then again, she doesn't understand why I need all the computers that I have.

sure, that's a trivial response that doesn't really address my point. I am suggesting that the authors could expend the same energy and find or create something that's much more interesting to many more people.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#76

Post by yangcanvas » Wed, May 09, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

social_quotient wrote: post #27

If this article was an intro to a fiction novel, I’d be interested in reading the entire thing. Some sort of HFT heist with a good mix of factual engineering and finance.

Rougue Code by Mark Russinovich was a novel I enjoyed about a HFT heist.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#77

Post by tudorconstantin » Wed, May 09, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

mathgenius wrote: post #66

jlgaddis wrote: post #58

I'm not even remotely involved with the HFT world, but I can't think of any good reason why they'd want to receive "shortwave" signals from Europe in Chicago. Short-haul microwave links for low latency and high bandwidth, yes, but at shortwave frequencies you are literally talking about BITS per second. TFA says "Think dialup speeds" but this is lower than even dialup! They certainly aren't receiving any meaningful a…

It's not amount of data but latency. A signal to buy is just one bit, but you need to get it before everyone else does.

Could an adversary send buy/sell fake signals and profit?

Given the low bandwidth I assume they can't use very sophisticated authentication mechanisms

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#78

Post by FearNotDaniel » Wed, May 09, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

vasilipupkin wrote: post #54

i have one question: why expend some much energy on unearthing obscure stuff that has relevance only to a very small subset of a very small industry and literally nobody else? seems like a waste of effort.

Short answer: because this is Hacker News, not Middle Manager In A Large Organization Serving A Well Established Market News.

The author went to the effort simply because he himself found it interesting. He published it on a hunch that at least a few other people would find it as interesting as he did, even if they are not working in that industry, just because technology is interesting in its own right. He was right.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#79

Post by vasilipupkin » Wed, May 09, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #78

vasilipupkin wrote: post #54

i have one question: why expend some much energy on unearthing obscure stuff that has relevance only to a very small subset of a very small industry and literally nobody else? seems like a waste of effort.

Short answer: because this is Hacker News, not Middle Manager In A Large Organization Serving A Well Established Market News. The author went to the effort simply because he himself found it interesting. He published it on a hunch that at least a few other people would find it as interesting as he did, even if they are not working in that industry, just because technology is interesting in its own right. He was right…

that's obviously a tautological answer. I am saying, he is doing a lot of work, if he redirected this work towards something more relevant to more people, he would produce more results for himself and for everyone else.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#80

Post by Animats » Wed, May 09, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

Jommi wrote: post #25

tomfanning wrote: post #13

Would love to know what licensing regime / category they are using for this. It definitely isn't ham, because that's non-commercial only. The fact that log period antennas are in use is interesting too - low gain but directional and useful across a broad frequency range - maybe some spread spectrum technology?

https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=205708&x=

That one, WI2XER, has been heard, and seen on a spectrum analyzer.[1] They send their call sign in Morse code, send various test tones, and send what look like modem-type signals. 100 KW, so they will have no problem reaching Europe. Not much bandwidth, though, because they don't have enough spectrum space. Maybe a few hundred kilobits/second.

As a way to get info from markets faster, it's limited. You avoid some switching and path delays, but the data rate is slow, so it's only faster for short messages.

[1] http://i56578-swl.blogspot.com/2018/03/wi2xer-skycast-experi...