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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

#151

Post by anigbrowl »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #76
ortusdux wrote: post #13

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…

No. It's garbage, trading is supposed to serve human needs and should take place on human timescales. If I had a magic wand I'd randomly fuzz the timing of trades to remove a lot of incentives for HFT and some other kinds of automated trading, which are not much more than banging on a known deficiency in a slot machine.

Proponents argue that HFT and other such innovations provide liquidity to markets; my skeptical take is that this is a nice technical-sounding term for traders with cash to lowball falling asset prices.

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

#152

Post by anigbrowl »

marcell wrote: post #101
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #76

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's the actual harm of HFT for the average person? I can set a $ limit on my orders, so I don't pay more than I want. Why should I care if some HFT guy scrapes 0.01% value off each trade?

This is referred to in the finance industry as 'picking up nickels in front of a steamroller'. It generally works out great for everyone until someone gets pulled under the steamroller, which can lead to an insolvency cascade.

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

#153

Post by eqvinox »

cycomanic wrote: post #120

I like the ETH result and it is an impressive feat (I know some people involved in that work). That said the article is a lot of rubbish. First there is the weird focus on lasers, all (relevant) Optical Communication uses lasers, including fibre comms. Then they make it sound like this is to replace fibre, again rubbish. The amount of data going through fibres is absolutely staggering, replacing this with intersatell…

(really off-topic)

The Z on ETHZ is important, ETH on its own is just (loosely) "university", the Z makes it the Zürich one ;D. There is exactly one other: EPFL in Lausanne. (And you can technically call them EPFZ and ETHL if you really want to confuse people.)

(EPF [École Polytechnique Fédérale] is just the French version of German ETH [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule]. Funnily enough both have pretty good international reputations, but due to the primary regional language being different are rarely recognized to be the same type of Swiss education entity.)

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

#154

Post by darrin »

DylanDmitri wrote: post #150
elif wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HFT isn't even that harmful. What's harmful is brokerages that hold large portions of financial instruments who take advantage of customers' live buying and selling with delayed swaps, intentional front running, etc. This is how the stock market was bullied before HFT, options markets, trading bots, etc enabled 'everyone' to do skeezy arbitrage and not just market makers. The only meaningful way to limit the efficacy…

How about forcing public markets to bucket trades within say 2 second windows, executing best matches at the end of each period. Low friction and reduces value of millisecond latency advantages.

Even a 1-2 millisecond batch auction would do it. But the big trading firms are the largest "customers" of exchanges, and they've pushed back hard on proposals like this.

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

#155

Post by darrin »

willis936 wrote: post #80
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #76

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…

The best solution I've seen is to do batch auctions every millisecond or so, and randomize matches within that window (for market orders or limit orders at the same price). You could use a longer window to include slower players in the market.

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

#156

Post by darrin »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #87
willis936 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ye…

Adding this sort of friction would increase spreads. Market makers are a net positive for markets (who buys/sells when no one else wants to?), and I don't see any downside to allowing them to manage risk and trade quickly. I think the way to increase fairness is to change the way orders are matched.

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

#157

Post by ketralnis »

huijzer wrote: post #4

Eliminate deep sea cables? How are they going to send the lasers in a curve from one base station to the next? Starlink is already working on a backhaul from satellite to satellite. Interestingly, they claim that they can speed up data transfers by 50% over long distances. Musk said that in a Tweet which I cannot find now. I looked a bit into it and the reason seems to be that light trough a cable can only reach 70%…

> Musk said that in a Tweet

This gives me negative confidence in the claim

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

#158

Post by 542458 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #88
542458 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We gain the same benefit all commerce creates: somebody wants to buy, somebody else wants to sell, both those people make a deal, both those people have fulfilled their wants. The seller is happy because they preferred cash to the stock, the buyer is happy because they believe they can sell the stock for more money later. What difference does it make if the buyer plans to sell in a second or a month?

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

#159

Post by mrinterweb »

What about solar storms? I would expect the damage would be more catastrophic if a major solar wind storm took down a decent percentage of the the satellites than terrestrial fiber. A satellite network seems more vulnerable and harder to fix. I'm sure deep sea cables are no picnic to fix, and they are susceptible to sabotage too. https://www.space.com/solar-storms-destroy-satellites

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

#160

Post by soligern »

DylanDmitri wrote: post #150
elif wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HFT isn't even that harmful. What's harmful is brokerages that hold large portions of financial instruments who take advantage of customers' live buying and selling with delayed swaps, intentional front running, etc. This is how the stock market was bullied before HFT, options markets, trading bots, etc enabled 'everyone' to do skeezy arbitrage and not just market makers. The only meaningful way to limit the efficacy…

How about forcing public markets to bucket trades within say 2 second windows, executing best matches at the end of each period. Low friction and reduces value of millisecond latency advantages.

Then there would be algorithms that analyze the trades in those buckets, make a prediction on the outcome and carry out several counter trades to put into the same bucket. See a lot of people selling, cancel your buy order and replace with a short instead. Get a few of those bots involved and each bucket window would be exploding dueling pits of orders that would require insanely large systems to process.
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