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Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables

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Re: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables

#81

Current fiber optic cables transmit signals at 2/3rds the speed of light. Modeling has shown that starlink's laser backbone would allow it to beat deep-sea cables in some situations. This article estimates a NYSE -> FTSE reduction from 76ms to 43ms. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there is a HFT bidding war going on. https://archmeregreenarch.org/1456/news/starlink-and-the-ris... There is a newer version of fib…

Am I the only one who thinks HFT should be forbidden? Stocks and investments are a nice thing to have, since you can buy a share of a company you believe in, they get the money, do stuff, you get dividends and in the end can sell the stock after some time too. HFT changes these "beliefs in company" to "beliefs that the stock will go up", and the timeframe of those "beliefs" is sometimes in milliseconds. This turns cl…

[deleted]

Re: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables

#82

Current fiber optic cables transmit signals at 2/3rds the speed of light. Modeling has shown that starlink's laser backbone would allow it to beat deep-sea cables in some situations. This article estimates a NYSE -> FTSE reduction from 76ms to 43ms. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there is a HFT bidding war going on. https://archmeregreenarch.org/1456/news/starlink-and-the-ris... There is a newer version of fib…

Am I the only one who thinks HFT should be forbidden? Stocks and investments are a nice thing to have, since you can buy a share of a company you believe in, they get the money, do stuff, you get dividends and in the end can sell the stock after some time too. HFT changes these "beliefs in company" to "beliefs that the stock will go up", and the timeframe of those "beliefs" is sometimes in milliseconds. This turns cl…

Honestly, I don't understand how they're legal, either. HFT just seems like the most naked of naked cash grabs in finance.

Re: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables

#83
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And HFT setups are also nearly colocated with the exchanges I understand -- as close as they can get physically, so adding a hop to space and back may be adding quite a bit of distance.

This would be about reducing latency between these two exchanges to enable arbitrage opportunities the way I understood it.

"Why is our market crashing" might actually have something to do with the price of tea in China soon.

Re: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who thinks HFT should be forbidden? Stocks and investments are a nice thing to have, since you can buy a share of a company you believe in, they get the money, do stuff, you get dividends and in the end can sell the stock after some time too. HFT changes these "beliefs in company" to "beliefs that the stock will go up", and the timeframe of those "beliefs" is sometimes in milliseconds. This turns cl…

What would that look like? If you rate limit stock exchanges to something like 1 update per minute then there will likely be the same amount of networking and computation going on to speculate on the next update and calculate optimal plays. It just moves it to behind closed doors where it is harder to know if shenanigans are going on. It would take a heavier hand to push against this problem. I'm all for it, I'm just…

> What would that look like?

One attempt is the exchange IEX [0] which introduced a ~350 microsecond delay to everything simply by running incoming order data through a ~60km loop of fiber-optic cable.

Perhaps not the most, er, featureful solution, but it's very easy to audit and argue that there are no biases or backdoors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEX

Re: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who thinks HFT should be forbidden? Stocks and investments are a nice thing to have, since you can buy a share of a company you believe in, they get the money, do stuff, you get dividends and in the end can sell the stock after some time too. HFT changes these "beliefs in company" to "beliefs that the stock will go up", and the timeframe of those "beliefs" is sometimes in milliseconds. This turns cl…

What would that look like? If you rate limit stock exchanges to something like 1 update per minute then there will likely be the same amount of networking and computation going on to speculate on the next update and calculate optimal plays. It just moves it to behind closed doors where it is harder to know if shenanigans are going on. It would take a heavier hand to push against this problem. I'm all for it, I'm just…

Limit trades to once per hour, then, and require a human to enter them.

Re: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables

#86

Current fiber optic cables transmit signals at 2/3rds the speed of light. Modeling has shown that starlink's laser backbone would allow it to beat deep-sea cables in some situations. This article estimates a NYSE -> FTSE reduction from 76ms to 43ms. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there is a HFT bidding war going on. https://archmeregreenarch.org/1456/news/starlink-and-the-ris... There is a newer version of fib…

Am I the only one who thinks HFT should be forbidden? Stocks and investments are a nice thing to have, since you can buy a share of a company you believe in, they get the money, do stuff, you get dividends and in the end can sell the stock after some time too. HFT changes these "beliefs in company" to "beliefs that the stock will go up", and the timeframe of those "beliefs" is sometimes in milliseconds. This turns cl…

> since you can buy a share of a company you believe in

I don't think this is generally true. Stock trading isn't charity, it's done to make a profit. Almost trading is done on the basis of second order effects, and has been for as long as there's been a stock market. Stocks aren't given value by the company being profitable, they're given value by what other people are willing to pay for them (okay, yes, dividends also factor in, but many companies don't pay dividends and people still assign value to those stocks).

Re: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who thinks HFT should be forbidden? Stocks and investments are a nice thing to have, since you can buy a share of a company you believe in, they get the money, do stuff, you get dividends and in the end can sell the stock after some time too. HFT changes these "beliefs in company" to "beliefs that the stock will go up", and the timeframe of those "beliefs" is sometimes in milliseconds. This turns cl…

What would that look like? If you rate limit stock exchanges to something like 1 update per minute then there will likely be the same amount of networking and computation going on to speculate on the next update and calculate optimal plays. It just moves it to behind closed doors where it is harder to know if shenanigans are going on. It would take a heavier hand to push against this problem. I'm all for it, I'm just…

If you buy a stock, you must keep (hold) it for eg. 30 days (or 7, or 60, or whatever).

Compute all you want, whenever you want, but instead of millisecond timings, optimize stuff for at least some time.

Maybe even a tax on stock profits, which is really high and falls after some time of ownership of such stock (we have this in slovenia, but it's not really high in the first place, and time brackets go less than 5 years (25%), 5-10 years (15%), 10-15 years (10%) , 15-20 years (5%), and zero tax after that.

Re: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables

#88
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who thinks HFT should be forbidden? Stocks and investments are a nice thing to have, since you can buy a share of a company you believe in, they get the money, do stuff, you get dividends and in the end can sell the stock after some time too. HFT changes these "beliefs in company" to "beliefs that the stock will go up", and the timeframe of those "beliefs" is sometimes in milliseconds. This turns cl…

> since you can buy a share of a company you believe in I don't think this is generally true. Stock trading isn't charity, it's done to make a profit. Almost trading is done on the basis of second order effects, and has been for as long as there's been a stock market. Stocks aren't given value by the company being profitable, they're given value by what other people are willing to pay for them (okay, yes, dividends a…

Well sure it's for profit, but what exactly do we (the society) get if we allow millisecond investments in our companies? Compared to classic, long-term investments.

Re: Lasers enable satellite internet backbone, might remove need for deep-sea cables

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who thinks HFT should be forbidden? Stocks and investments are a nice thing to have, since you can buy a share of a company you believe in, they get the money, do stuff, you get dividends and in the end can sell the stock after some time too. HFT changes these "beliefs in company" to "beliefs that the stock will go up", and the timeframe of those "beliefs" is sometimes in milliseconds. This turns cl…

What would that look like? If you rate limit stock exchanges to something like 1 update per minute then there will likely be the same amount of networking and computation going on to speculate on the next update and calculate optimal plays. It just moves it to behind closed doors where it is harder to know if shenanigans are going on. It would take a heavier hand to push against this problem. I'm all for it, I'm just…

What about a flat "Tobin tax" charged on each transaction so that it becomes very expensive to do lots of small trades quickly and encourages doing bigger trades at lower frequency?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax

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