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Radio Engineer Files Objection to WIPE

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Re: Radio Engineer Files Objection to WIPE

#31

Post by ficklepickle »

ISL wrote: post #28
kstrauser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I am appointed Lord Emperor, I'm going to make capital gains taxes inversely proportional to the amount of time you held the asset. Oh, you just flipped $1M in 30ms? That's going to be painful come tax day.

Man, it'll be hard to be a grocery store, or any other intermediary, under that regime. Such a rule would slaughter credit-card processors, too. Anyone who makes a market or facilitates a transaction would have a problem. To expand a bit -- an antidote to HFT front-running is the limit order. If you can buy the thing you want at a price you believe is acceptable, HFT front-runners simply get paid for providing you li…

I don't think grocery stores pay capital gains tax on the sundries they sell. If you sold a whole grocery store, then yes. But inventory is not considered a capital asset.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_asset

Re: Radio Engineer Files Objection to WIPE

#32

Post by joezydeco »

dcminter wrote: post #19

So at what point does it become economical to use particle accelerators to send neutrino/pion/whatnot beams in a direct line through the earth between trading datacentres? Sounds like the setup for a B-movie though...

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange's data center is a stone's throw away from the Fermilab facility in Batavia (the same town where Parable wants to install their HF/HFT transmitter).

It's not out of the realm of thought!

Re: Radio Engineer Files Objection to WIPE

#33

Post by maxbond »

ISL wrote: post #28
kstrauser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I am appointed Lord Emperor, I'm going to make capital gains taxes inversely proportional to the amount of time you held the asset. Oh, you just flipped $1M in 30ms? That's going to be painful come tax day.

Man, it'll be hard to be a grocery store, or any other intermediary, under that regime. Such a rule would slaughter credit-card processors, too. Anyone who makes a market or facilitates a transaction would have a problem. To expand a bit -- an antidote to HFT front-running is the limit order. If you can buy the thing you want at a price you believe is acceptable, HFT front-runners simply get paid for providing you li…

How are any of those operations effected by capital gains? They aren't talking about moving money around, they're talking about selling stock that has appreciated in price.

With regards to frontrunning, the problem isn't that XYZ is trading at $5 and I get charged $5.05 because I put in a market order - or at least, the problI don't think you fully understand frontrunning either.em isn't _just_ that. The problem is that between when I send my limit for $5, the price drops to $4.95. But through whatever mechanism, latency arbitrage, order flashes, whatever, the HFT knows my order is coming in at $5, and they scoop up all the liquidity and sell it to me at $5.

Sure, if I priced the security correctly, $5 is a fair price. But I took market risk and I deserve the reward of buying at $4.95. The HFT, entering and leaving positions only when they know someone is coming, is taking no market risk, and is stealing my gains without providing any liquidity or hazarding the market with the rest of us.

This is a simplification of course, in order to place teaser orders the HFT has to endure some market risk. But they've cranked it down to a rounding error.

Another problem is that the retail brokers have gone to 0 commission by selling their order flow to the same HFTs. What this really means is that commissions are variable, arbitrary, and unknowable. Try putting that in a spreadsheet.

Re: Radio Engineer Files Objection to WIPE

#34

Post by giantrobot »

parliament32 wrote: post #25
yholio wrote: post #6

This should be understood as high frequency stock traders fighting for turf. One shop tries to access broadcasting bands to enable higher powers, thus, more reliable transmission, by multiplexing the payload with general purpose economic news - allegedly. Another HFT shop is trying to preempt this. The race for speed in financial markets has reached a point where no existing fiber optic or satelite based system can c…

>bounce back on the ionosphere >the shortest path That's effectively the opposite of shortest path. If you really want the best performance you'd set up a line of microwave links.. I'm not sure how much latency the hops would add but if you have fast enough gear, it's probably not enough to justify going all the way up and back down.

The ionosphere is not all that far away. Radio travels at about 0.97c in the atmosphere. At shortwave frequencies the ionospheric E layer provides the best reflection IIRC. The E layer's altitude is less than 100 miles (60-90mi) but can bounce a signal hundreds of miles horizontally.

If you want to reach a receiver a hundred miles away an HF bounce off the E layer would get there in 0.659ms (if my math is right). If you had a 100 mile long fiber optic cable your signal would get there in 0.813ms.

Microwave repeaters can be very fast so long as you've got good positioning. If you managed a straight line of repeaters to a receiver you might be able to beat the HF path. For the best results microwave repeaters shouldn't be too far apart so for the hundred mile trip you'd want several repeaters. Each is going to add something like 150ns latency. This is cumulative with the 0.97c air latency. And it's only to a single receiver.

So microwave repeaters would beat HF sometimes, depending on topography, to a single receiver. I think HF would end up winning out more often than not and wouldn't require the infrastructure of the microwave repeaters. It would make siting receivers much easier and would likely allow receiving stations to optimize siting for the last mile to the trading systems.

That being said I don't think HFTs should be able to abuse HF by broadcasting things not usable by the general public. If they want to cut their latency they can use some of their hojillions of dollars to build microwave infrastructure or pay everyone for use of the HF airwaves they want to make money with.

Re: Radio Engineer Files Objection to WIPE

#35

Post by alexpil »

PoachedSausage wrote: post #18
londons_explore wrote: post #4

There might be a neat way to work around these laws... Make all the data, including the financial data public. But make sure the people you want to see the data can access it first. Arrange the data in the air so every error recovery block is mixed with financial and non-financial data. Send the non-financial data out of band, and ahead of time, to your paying customers. Now when a data block starts being transmitted…

I'm surprised that it is not possible in US to buy air time on commercial stations for exclusive use of the buyer and their customers. Surely it would be similar to buying an advertisement. Here in the UK we already have data transmission over AM radio[0], nominally for remotely switching electrical equipment on and off but could be used for anything that only needs a low data-rate channel. I would not be surprised i…

AM radio (medium-wave/long-wave) is different from shortwave.

In US, similar "utility response" is permitted as well for AM broadcasters, since 1981 https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-81-258A1.pdf

Subsequently, permission was granted to all AM and FM broadcasters for "subsidiary communications" of any kind, https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-84-113A1.pdf

But that's not "shortwave"/International HF broadcast

Re: Radio Engineer Files Objection to WIPE

#37

Post by alexpil »

reaperducer wrote: post #29
parliament32 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>bounce back on the ionosphere >the shortest path That's effectively the opposite of shortest path. If you really want the best performance you'd set up a line of microwave links.. I'm not sure how much latency the hops would add but if you have fast enough gear, it's probably not enough to justify going all the way up and back down.

You missed the word "intercontinental" in the parent poster's message. Good luck setting up a microwave link between New York and London that will be faster than a short wave transmission.

sure, balloons would do it.

i've prototyped that. :)

Re: Radio Engineer Files Objection to WIPE

#38

Post by alexpil »

jacobush wrote: post #5
londons_explore wrote: post #4

There might be a neat way to work around these laws... Make all the data, including the financial data public. But make sure the people you want to see the data can access it first. Arrange the data in the air so every error recovery block is mixed with financial and non-financial data. Send the non-financial data out of band, and ahead of time, to your paying customers. Now when a data block starts being transmitted…

Sounds like a judge will have to decide if that's in the spirit of the law. But it's very neat, I have to agree.

The decision is whether it meets the threshold "public interest" (which includes meaning of "broadcast"). And it'll be made either by FCC Media Bureau, or by Commission itself. It's highly unlikely it'll get appealed to courts.

Re: Radio Engineer Files Objection to WIPE

#39

Post by alexpil »

dcminter wrote: post #19

So at what point does it become economical to use particle accelerators to send neutrino/pion/whatnot beams in a direct line through the earth between trading datacentres? Sounds like the setup for a B-movie though...

pfft. One nucflash=buy, two nucflash=sell

Re: Radio Engineer Files Objection to WIPE

#40

Post by kstrauser »

maxbond wrote: post #33
ISL wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, it'll be hard to be a grocery store, or any other intermediary, under that regime. Such a rule would slaughter credit-card processors, too. Anyone who makes a market or facilitates a transaction would have a problem. To expand a bit -- an antidote to HFT front-running is the limit order. If you can buy the thing you want at a price you believe is acceptable, HFT front-runners simply get paid for providing you li…

How are any of those operations effected by capital gains? They aren't talking about moving money around, they're talking about selling stock that has appreciated in price. With regards to frontrunning, the problem isn't that XYZ is trading at $5 and I get charged $5.05 because I put in a market order - or at least, the problI don't think you fully understand frontrunning either.em isn't _just_ that. The problem is t…

That's right. HFT extracts value from the market without providing any of its own. It's purely rent-seeking.
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