4 ms·

I occasionally meet bankers here in London and I can't help but think to myself what a waste of time and effort when there are actual problems to solve. Bit ru

I occasionally meet bankers here in London and I can't help but think to myself what a waste of time and effort when there are actual problems to solve. Bit rude I guess but a whole generation of bright people reducing the latency of trades or compliance software or a new trading algorithm does not move us from zero to one, maybe more zero to -0.3 or something. How people can claim the market allocates money correctly I do not know, it doesn't seem possible with the rigging and illegal activity that's been going on.

IndianAstronaut 11y ago
Increase or maintain good funding for the sciences. A lot of people in the sciences aren't greedy, they just want to earn a decent wage doing what they love. Problem is that the grant situation now is so bad in scientific research, people are leaving in droves. I was doing research on environmental effects on organisms and their offspring with huge implications in development. Now I am using my talents to get more clicks for a website.
plg 11y ago
I think the same thing when I meet coders who spend their time on ways to get consumers to click on more ads. Or ways to track consumers. Or ways to trick consumers into providing their personal information.
- manigandham 11y ago
  As someone who works in the ad industry - by far the best way to get people to click on ads is to have better ads that are more relevant and interesting and correct for that person (and which tracking plays a supporting role). In this case, they serve as a very efficient market to connect people with the goods and services they want/need which only helps the greater economy and benefits everyone.
atemerev 11y ago
Well I am a quant strategy developer, a libertarian, and I am quite proud of my job (except for the compliance part). I see no "rigging and illegal activity" where I work. (Being legal is not equal to being moral, by the way, and vice versa).
vostok 11y ago
I think it is odd to conflate "bright people reducing the latency of trades" with "rigging and illegal activity". It seems to me that the former are rarely involved in the latter. One only needs to look at the libor cases, the FX fixing cases, or the gold fixing case. I actually have a pet conspiracy theory that the articles about HFT are the result of lobbying on the part of banks. When I worked at a bank, I did see articles that were heavily influenced by employees of the bank. This influence was never nefarious, but I can see how a traditional trader's biases may have lead to some of these HFT articles. I rarely see articles about the evils of internalization, something that I strongly believe brings great harm to the markets. At the same time, I often see articles about how HFT takes advantage of the market and brings little benefit when I've made internal measurements that show just the opposite. Of course none of the above is any sort of advice, and it's probably appropriate for me to note that I've worked as trader at a bank and currently work as a trader at an HFT firm.
- topbanana 11y ago
  > I rarely see articles about the evils of internalization, something that I strongly believe brings great harm to the markets How?
  - vostok 11y ago
    Internalization disincetivizes people from making tight markets in lit venues because you will only get filled when an internalizer thought the flow was toxic. This in turn means that markets are wider for all participants.
- andy_ppp 11y ago
  To be clear I'm saying I don't believe HFT benefits anyone? If there are any papers you know about showing how it's beneficial to allocating capital efficiently I'd love to see them. I don't understand how it can work to do this apart from being some kind of bizarre capitalist arms race...

IndianAstronaut 11y ago

Increase or maintain good funding for the sciences. A lot of people in the sciences aren't greedy, they just want to earn a decent wage doing what they love. Problem is that the grant situation now is so bad in scientific research, people are leaving in droves. I was doing research on environmental effects on organisms and their offspring with huge implications in development. Now I am using my talents to get more clicks for a website.

plg 11y ago

I think the same thing when I meet coders who spend their time on ways to get consumers to click on more ads. Or ways to track consumers. Or ways to trick consumers into providing their personal information.

manigandham 11y ago
As someone who works in the ad industry - by far the best way to get people to click on ads is to have better ads that are more relevant and interesting and correct for that person (and which tracking plays a supporting role). In this case, they serve as a very efficient market to connect people with the goods and services they want/need which only helps the greater economy and benefits everyone.

atemerev 11y ago

Well I am a quant strategy developer, a libertarian, and I am quite proud of my job (except for the compliance part). I see no "rigging and illegal activity" where I work. (Being legal is not equal to being moral, by the way, and vice versa).

vostok 11y ago

I think it is odd to conflate "bright people reducing the latency of trades" with "rigging and illegal activity". It seems to me that the former are rarely involved in the latter. One only needs to look at the libor cases, the FX fixing cases, or the gold fixing case. I actually have a pet conspiracy theory that the articles about HFT are the result of lobbying on the part of banks. When I worked at a bank, I did see articles that were heavily influenced by employees of the bank. This influence was never nefarious, but I can see how a traditional trader's biases may have lead to some of these HFT articles. I rarely see articles about the evils of internalization, something that I strongly believe brings great harm to the markets. At the same time, I often see articles about how HFT takes advantage of the market and brings little benefit when I've made internal measurements that show just the opposite. Of course none of the above is any sort of advice, and it's probably appropriate for me to note that I've worked as trader at a bank and currently work as a trader at an HFT firm.

topbanana 11y ago
> I rarely see articles about the evils of internalization, something that I strongly believe brings great harm to the markets How?
- vostok 11y ago
  Internalization disincetivizes people from making tight markets in lit venues because you will only get filled when an internalizer thought the flow was toxic. This in turn means that markets are wider for all participants.
andy_ppp 11y ago
To be clear I'm saying I don't believe HFT benefits anyone? If there are any papers you know about showing how it's beneficial to allocating capital efficiently I'd love to see them. I don't understand how it can work to do this apart from being some kind of bizarre capitalist arms race...