4 ms·

What is allowed that horrifies you?

• sschueller 9y ago
  One that bothers me the most is automated high frequency trading. They can cause the entire market to crash because of one mistake.
  • kirillseva 9y ago
    automated high frequency trading also does the important work of eliminating the question "Which exchange should I buy AAPL at?" HFT is mostly ultra-fast arbitrage programs, and the benefit of using them far outweighs the downsides. Maybe the problem is not with HFT but in the industry as a whole
  • vostok 9y ago
    A human trader can also cause the entire market to crash because of one mistake. See Waddell trading 75k e-minis or PVM trading 7 million barrels of brent while drunk.
• jonmc12 9y ago
  Robert Reich's "Saving Capitalism" documentary on Netflix does a pretty good job to answer this question. TLDR; Wall Street is part of an industrial/political system that extols "free market" capitalism, publicly, when in fact, "free markets" and "free market meritocracy" is a myth, and they know it. Privately, these same people hire lobbyists and otherwise influence the political system to craft regulation & policy around property, monopoly, contracts, bankruptcy, and enforcement. These regulations protect and enhance the benefit of the few.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    I wouldn't say that's totally wrong... but does it follow that, therefore, there should be no regulation whatsoever? That has negative consequences too.