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Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: WindAndConfusion on Tuesday, July 07, 2009, 04:55:46 PM

Title: All of a sudden, I understand the financial collapse perfectly.
Post by: WindAndConfusion on Tuesday, July 07, 2009, 04:55:46 PM

Quote

In a nutshell, the "black box" trading platforms of Goldman and other banks use a combination of proprietary, secret algorithms and the fastest hardware available to take in a torrent of news and other market data and generate a stream of trades that are timed to the millisecond. So, instead of operating on the old stock market adage, "buy on the rumor, sell on the news," a high-frequency trading platform like Goldman's will buy a few milliseconds after the news hits, then sell moments later at a very small premium to other traders and platforms who didn't get the news in (or their trades out) quite as fast. Do this billions of times a day, and voila, you're printing money.

I want you to know that when I read this, I swore at every deity from every religion. (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/goldmans-secret-sauce-could-be-loose-online-markets-beware.ars)

Title: Re: All of a sudden, I understand the financial collapse perfectly.
Post by: Quemaqua on Tuesday, July 07, 2009, 06:30:54 PM

/me opens mouth to speak, fails to emit sound, closes mouth.
/me attempts to type thoughts, fails to type thoughts, walks away from keyboard.

 ...
/me rummages for shotgun.

Title: Re: All of a sudden, I understand the financial collapse perfectly.
Post by: Ghandi on Tuesday, July 07, 2009, 09:26:10 PM

Yeah but if you hate stuff like this you're basically communist.

Title: Re: All of a sudden, I understand the financial collapse perfectly.
Post by: Xessive on Wednesday, July 08, 2009, 07:04:36 AM

Capitalism sucks, communism sucks. Both are ridiculous extremes, ideally we should have a system of moderation.

Title: Re: All of a sudden, I understand the financial collapse perfectly.
Post by: Cobra951 on Wednesday, July 08, 2009, 07:06:42 AM

A system that imposes social obligations on business?  You damn socialist!

Title: Re: All of a sudden, I understand the financial collapse perfectly.
Post by: Pugnate on Wednesday, July 08, 2009, 07:19:05 AM

Quote from: WindAndConfusion on Tuesday, July 07, 2009, 04:55:46 PM

I want you to know that when I read this, I swore at every deity from every religion. (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/goldmans-secret-sauce-could-be-loose-online-markets-beware.ars)

How long did it take you to get through Hinduism?

Title: Re: All of a sudden, I understand the financial collapse perfectly.
Post by: K-man on Wednesday, July 08, 2009, 09:20:09 AM

America, FUCK YEAH!

Title: Re: All of a sudden, I understand the financial collapse perfectly.
Post by: Ghandi on Friday, July 24, 2009, 04:52:47 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=1&em

Good, short article on high-frequency trading.