6 ms·

At the very least, they produce liquidity. If you saw someone selling a brick of gold for a dollar, wouldn't you buy it to resell it?

osrec 10y ago
Liquidity that brings with it random, often unexplained volatility... But yes, I would probably buy the brick, and can understand why people lucky enough to have colo servers do this.
- imaginenore 10y ago
  Volatility hasn't changed much since the 70's: https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-62a6ee89ddc1c930de9afb84fe5ccf62?convert_to_webp=true https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-62a6ee89ddc1c930de9afb...
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    That chart is net volatility over 12 months and ends at 2014. I wonder how more recent and granular data would look.
    - osrec 10y ago
      I was going to make the same point. At lower timescales, things look very different. Also the number of orders, cancels and corrects has exploded in the last couple of decades, purely because of algorithmic speculation. This makes the market significantly less transparent, and the weird and wonderful matching algorithms employed by exchanges often get gamed by colo'd traders with the relevant knowledge.
- usefulcat 10y ago
  Regarding colo servers, there's no luck involved at all, just a price tag.
  - vostok 10y ago
    And, at least in the US, a fairly low price tag at that.
- gumby 10y ago
  I don't understand what you mean about "lucky". Anybody can. I have had a rack of colo servers which I use for personal stuff for the last 15 years. In an AWS world it's in some ways absurd, but some things are easier this way. Perhaps I missed the point you were making?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - georgiecasey 10y ago
    I think he's referring to traders paying for colocation in the exchange data centre.
    - osrec 10y ago
      Precisely, and money isn't the only factor here. Your contacts, your firm's contacts and your trade volumes (amongst other things) can get result in you getting preferential treatment.
    - gumby 10y ago
      Thanks, I could not see that implication. I guess it shows what field I do not work in :-)
keyle 10y ago
That volatility is deadly to the retail speculators. They get wiped out, off the markets, by this 'false' liquidity, which literally wiggles them out.
- vostok 10y ago
  As someone who works in the industry I've found that analogies are distinctly unhelpful. That's not really unique to finance [0]. Can you explain what you mean by "literally wiggles them out"? I cannot say that I have observed a phenomenon that I would describe with those words, but I'm always interested in learning more. [0] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=801816 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=801816
  - keyle 10y ago
    That increase in volatity pushes prices up and down without real logic behind, in the short term, causing the small retail pundits to hit their conservative stop losses and take them out of the market. That's what I meant by "wiggle them out". Does that make sense?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - harshreality 10y ago
      The terms people are likely to understand are "short squeeze" and "long squeeze".
    - Godel_unicode 10y ago
      Another way to say that is the market allows people to do things they don't really understand the consequences of, which can be expensive.
    - vostok 10y ago
      Thank you for clarifying. You're talking about retail speculators getting "stopped out". Do you have a reference showing that is happening with increasing frequency due to HFTs? It runs counter to my intuition because HFTs lead to less "gappy" markets and markets that respond to news events more quickly. For the purposes of this comment I will assume that this is true. Is the amount that retail speculators lose to increased frequency of getting stopped out greater than the amount they gain from tighter markets? I don't have a clear opinion on this. Is the net loss to retail speculators greater than the net gain to all other market participants? I suspect not because retail speculators are such a tiny portion of the market. If this kind of volatility has increased with HFTs, it's caused by an overly small tick size. Markets will go back to how they were if you increase the tick size back to 1/16 of a dollar. This wouldn't help price takers other than retail speculators, but that's how you fix it if it really is a problem.

osrec 10y ago

Liquidity that brings with it random, often unexplained volatility... But yes, I would probably buy the brick, and can understand why people lucky enough to have colo servers do this.

imaginenore 10y ago
Volatility hasn't changed much since the 70's: https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-62a6ee89ddc1c930de9afb84fe5ccf62?convert_to_webp=true https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-62a6ee89ddc1c930de9afb...
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  That chart is net volatility over 12 months and ends at 2014. I wonder how more recent and granular data would look.
  - osrec 10y ago
    I was going to make the same point. At lower timescales, things look very different. Also the number of orders, cancels and corrects has exploded in the last couple of decades, purely because of algorithmic speculation. This makes the market significantly less transparent, and the weird and wonderful matching algorithms employed by exchanges often get gamed by colo'd traders with the relevant knowledge.
usefulcat 10y ago
Regarding colo servers, there's no luck involved at all, just a price tag.
- vostok 10y ago
  And, at least in the US, a fairly low price tag at that.
gumby 10y ago
I don't understand what you mean about "lucky". Anybody can. I have had a rack of colo servers which I use for personal stuff for the last 15 years. In an AWS world it's in some ways absurd, but some things are easier this way. Perhaps I missed the point you were making?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- georgiecasey 10y ago
  I think he's referring to traders paying for colocation in the exchange data centre.
  - osrec 10y ago
    Precisely, and money isn't the only factor here. Your contacts, your firm's contacts and your trade volumes (amongst other things) can get result in you getting preferential treatment.
  - gumby 10y ago
    Thanks, I could not see that implication. I guess it shows what field I do not work in :-)

keyle 10y ago

That volatility is deadly to the retail speculators. They get wiped out, off the markets, by this 'false' liquidity, which literally wiggles them out.

vostok 10y ago
As someone who works in the industry I've found that analogies are distinctly unhelpful. That's not really unique to finance [0]. Can you explain what you mean by "literally wiggles them out"? I cannot say that I have observed a phenomenon that I would describe with those words, but I'm always interested in learning more. [0] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=801816 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=801816
- keyle 10y ago
  That increase in volatity pushes prices up and down without real logic behind, in the short term, causing the small retail pundits to hit their conservative stop losses and take them out of the market. That's what I meant by "wiggle them out". Does that make sense?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - harshreality 10y ago
    The terms people are likely to understand are "short squeeze" and "long squeeze".
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    Another way to say that is the market allows people to do things they don't really understand the consequences of, which can be expensive.
  - vostok 10y ago
    Thank you for clarifying. You're talking about retail speculators getting "stopped out". Do you have a reference showing that is happening with increasing frequency due to HFTs? It runs counter to my intuition because HFTs lead to less "gappy" markets and markets that respond to news events more quickly. For the purposes of this comment I will assume that this is true. Is the amount that retail speculators lose to increased frequency of getting stopped out greater than the amount they gain from tighter markets? I don't have a clear opinion on this. Is the net loss to retail speculators greater than the net gain to all other market participants? I suspect not because retail speculators are such a tiny portion of the market. If this kind of volatility has increased with HFTs, it's caused by an overly small tick size. Markets will go back to how they were if you increase the tick size back to 1/16 of a dollar. This wouldn't help price takers other than retail speculators, but that's how you fix it if it really is a problem.