Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jump Trading, Virtu and the 'hidden optical fibre cable' under an Ohio field

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–77 of 77 posts

Re: Jump Trading, Virtu and the 'hidden optical fibre cable' under an Ohio field

#71

Post by bob1029 »

> Experimental licences have more bandwidth than commercial licences, allow for “frequency hopping”

I think there is another angle to this where the modulation scheme makes a lot of the difference. If you figure out a way to send market information below the noise floor (i.e., spread spectrum schemes) how would anyone even know what you are doing?

If I was operating an HFT firm I would be all-in on the "ask for forgiveness, not for permission" angle, because the politics around my business are really nasty.

Re: Jump Trading, Virtu and the 'hidden optical fibre cable' under an Ohio field

#72

Post by stephen_g »

thijson wrote: post #62
scrlk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I somewhat regret not specialising in RF/comms in my EE degree - this side of HFT sounds like a fascinating line of work ( Trading at the Speed of Light was a great read).

I doubt there's much here that's cutting edge. Any digital processing that's done in typical radio's to correct for channel impairments is avoided as it just adds latency. Meanwhile LTE is using as many digital techniques as possible to maximize bandwidth (MIMO, HARQ, OFMDA)

Haha, you got us :) - in terms of the digital side yes, kind of. We’d even try to not have any digital in the path if possible on some hops! We did have things like LDPC (and different FEC on control packets) but it was definitely not as complex as LTE or newer cellular or WiFi standards. But what was avoided digitally meant far more work going into the analogue side to improve SNR, dynamic range, NPR etc. through the signal chain.

Re: Jump Trading, Virtu and the 'hidden optical fibre cable' under an Ohio field

#73

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bob1029 wrote: post #71

> Experimental licences have more bandwidth than commercial licences, allow for “frequency hopping” I think there is another angle to this where the modulation scheme makes a lot of the difference. If you figure out a way to send market information below the noise floor (i.e., spread spectrum schemes) how would anyone even know what you are doing? If I was operating an HFT firm I would be all-in on the "ask for forgi…

> I would be all-in on the "ask for forgiveness, not for permission" angle, because the politics around my business are really nasty

Securities are one of the few parts of the American economy regulated like a European sector. Complain-investigate regimes. Various agencies at multiple levels who can ban you from industry and fine you. The rational response is to turn risk tolerance down, not up.

Re: Jump Trading, Virtu and the 'hidden optical fibre cable' under an Ohio field

#74

Post by JumpCrisscross »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #55

Remember when HN was always HFT comp dick swinging contests? Would any top grad nowadays go to Jane Street over OpenAI or Anthropic?

> Would any top grad nowadays go to Jane Street over OpenAI or Anthropic?

You’re measuring which part of the economy pays math majors best. If I had to trace the centre of gravity of my top former colleagues, it was banks and hedge funds (never Jane); Uber; some leakage to crypto, they never recovered; now AI.

Re: Jump Trading, Virtu and the 'hidden optical fibre cable' under an Ohio field

#75

Post by bubberducky »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #55

Remember when HN was always HFT comp dick swinging contests? Would any top grad nowadays go to Jane Street over OpenAI or Anthropic?

No, I doubt it. At the same time, OAI and Anthropic both hire waaay less people straight from undergrad whereas Jane Street (and similar) are a lot more realistic, and it's not like the pay is bad.

Re: Jump Trading, Virtu and the 'hidden optical fibre cable' under an Ohio field

#76

Post by bcrl »

analog31 wrote: post #58
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More bluntly: light in a fibre is still bouncing around a lot.

Not in single mode fibers, which still exhibit the effect. It's just about the refractive index of glass.

Yes, even in single mode fibers light is bouncing around between the layers of glass with different diffraction indicies. The pulses just aren't dispersing while doing so.

Re: Jump Trading, Virtu and the 'hidden optical fibre cable' under an Ohio field

#77

Post by AnarchismIsCool »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #59
tzs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that better liquidity, etc., actually needed? If we consider the function of a market to be to arrive at prices that lead to the optimal allocation of the goods sold on that market, intuitively it would seem that there should be a limit on how fast trades need to propagate to achieve that, and the limit would be tied to how fast new information relevant to the producers and consumers of those goods comes out. I do…

> Is that better liquidity, etc., actually needed Broadly speaking, yes. Turning down liquidity increases spreads which affects which sorts of companies are able to raise what sorts of capital in those markets. The paradox of HFT is that it's much smaller and more efficient than the slower, manpower-heavy Wall Street industry it replaced. It's just weird, which makes it easy to demonise in popular politics.

No they're definitely evil. Maybe not broadly, but they keep trying to force long-standing public RF spectrum into the private domain just so random companies can have a very slight trading edge. I have a hard time believing that there aren't other negative externalities.
Post reply on HN