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Goldman Sachs is spending $100M to shave milliseconds off stock trades

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Re: Goldman Sachs is spending $100M to shave milliseconds off stock trades

#4
post #3

It seems like we could save a lot of pointless expenditure on an ultimately meaningless arms race in flash trading if we imposed reasonable limits on the time required to hold an equity in order for a trade to be legally recognized.

we should also not allow the president to engage in trade wars, but i possibly digress

Re: Goldman Sachs is spending $100M to shave milliseconds off stock trades

#5
post #4
post #3

It seems like we could save a lot of pointless expenditure on an ultimately meaningless arms race in flash trading if we imposed reasonable limits on the time required to hold an equity in order for a trade to be legally recognized.

we should also not allow the president to engage in trade wars, but i possibly digress

please digress.

Re: Goldman Sachs is spending $100M to shave milliseconds off stock trades

#6
post #3

It seems like we could save a lot of pointless expenditure on an ultimately meaningless arms race in flash trading if we imposed reasonable limits on the time required to hold an equity in order for a trade to be legally recognized.

Allowing trading of fractional pennies has been theorized to be another way to break up flash trading as you need to accurately guess the real price not just get your exact price up before anyone else.

Re: Goldman Sachs is spending $100M to shave milliseconds off stock trades

#7
Tangentially related, but I wonder how long before HFT harnesses neutrino transmission to send market data directly through the earth? The MINOS [1] project is underway to send neutrinos from Fermilab in Illinois to detectors in northern Minnesota. Straight through the earth's crust.

Detecting neutrinos is hard, and modulating data on them will probably be even more difficult, but if it shaves a few micro/milliseconds off trading time, I'm sure someone will make it happen eventually. HFT have already added dedicated undersea fiber-optic links [can't find source, NYC->LDN is obvious, I think there was talk or they began one from CHI/NYC->TOK but might be wrong, it involved the melting icecaps to easily sink the fiber cable], shortwave radio broadcasts [3], and microwave links [4]. I think HFT is frivolous, personally, but if it helps networking I think it would be cool to someday talk "on neutrinos" through the center of the earth!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINOS

[3] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-tr...

[4] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/priva...

Re: Goldman Sachs is spending $100M to shave milliseconds off stock trades

#9
Most exchanges have an auction process that sets opening and closing prices. They let everyone get their orders in and then run an algorithm to find the price that will execute the most volume.

They could do the same process every 5 minutes and only allow stocks to trade in the auction. Then all of the resources used on pointless HFT could be used on something economically productive.

Re: Goldman Sachs is spending $100M to shave milliseconds off stock trades

#10

Tangentially related, but I wonder how long before HFT harnesses neutrino transmission to send market data directly through the earth? The MINOS [1] project is underway to send neutrinos from Fermilab in Illinois to detectors in northern Minnesota. Straight through the earth's crust. Detecting neutrinos is hard, and modulating data on them will probably be even more difficult, but if it shaves a few micro/millisecond…

Very interesting. Physical wars brought pointless spending that prompted innovation.

I wonder if the mini-financial wars being waged will result in some cool tech coming out of all the craziness.

I had never though of this when thinking about the rent seeking nature of many parts of the financial industry.

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