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I work in finance, for a dark pool. Our "value add" is to provide the anonymity to both buyers and sellers (both in who they are, the side they're on and their

I work in finance, for a dark pool. Our "value add" is to provide the anonymity to both buyers and sellers (both in who they are, the side they're on and their limit) while doing minimal disturbance to the market. We only disseminate the symbol on an IOI, and we don't quote prices, at all. We facilitate moving large block trades with minimal information leakage to market et large while abiding by NMS rules. Effectively, we run blind auctions for large blocks of US traded equities.

bob_theslob646 8y ago
What are you trying to say? You add tremendous value for large customers who have the ability to not let everyone on a lit exchange know what they are doing. Actually from what I've heard more than 54% of all stock transactions are on on unlit alternative trading venues.
dx034 8y ago
How is that related to the parent comment? Those trades pre-GFC weren't on dark pools, that was mostly voice (over-the-phone trading).
oarsinsync 8y ago
I think the point here is either that 1) industries can evolve to no longer be predatory against their own customers/consumers of their services, or 2) just because one sector participant is behaving in immoral behaviour doesn’t mean all are, and labelling the entire industry as corrupt as a result may not be fair.
xorcist 8y ago
In you position, you are privy to a lot of information about your customers identities and order sizes before the order is executed. Do you sell this information to other customers? Because if you did, your example would be comparable to what's being discussed here.
- ihsw2 8y ago
  Even if they didn't sell this information wholesale via data brokerages, your argument leaves open wiggle-room for claiming innocence while still monetizing the information via selling aggregate data. This is something that is wholly uncovered in this whole debacle -- aggregate data (aka "anonymized" data ) is the cake beneath the icing. While Facebook et al may play nicely with regulators (and the general public) by quickly backing away from wholesale "unfiltered" data access, they can skirt the rules by providing "researchers" with anonymized data. All of them want this anonymized data for their own analytics reporting to measure success metrics and most will walk away when the spigot is closed.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    > they can skirt the rules by providing "researchers" with anonymized data. Probably, given the many past cases of academics using this kind of data to demonstrate de-anonymization attacks, with some very special vetting of who the researchers are and where their loyalties lie. Here's a decent writeup of their first big research-related privacy blunder: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Harvards-Privacy-Meltdown/128166 https://www.chronicle.com/article/Harvards-Privacy-Meltdown/...

bob_theslob646 8y ago

What are you trying to say? You add tremendous value for large customers who have the ability to not let everyone on a lit exchange know what they are doing. Actually from what I've heard more than 54% of all stock transactions are on on unlit alternative trading venues.

dx034 8y ago

How is that related to the parent comment? Those trades pre-GFC weren't on dark pools, that was mostly voice (over-the-phone trading).

oarsinsync 8y ago

I think the point here is either that 1) industries can evolve to no longer be predatory against their own customers/consumers of their services, or 2) just because one sector participant is behaving in immoral behaviour doesn’t mean all are, and labelling the entire industry as corrupt as a result may not be fair.

xorcist 8y ago

In you position, you are privy to a lot of information about your customers identities and order sizes before the order is executed. Do you sell this information to other customers? Because if you did, your example would be comparable to what's being discussed here.

ihsw2 8y ago
Even if they didn't sell this information wholesale via data brokerages, your argument leaves open wiggle-room for claiming innocence while still monetizing the information via selling aggregate data. This is something that is wholly uncovered in this whole debacle -- aggregate data (aka "anonymized" data ) is the cake beneath the icing. While Facebook et al may play nicely with regulators (and the general public) by quickly backing away from wholesale "unfiltered" data access, they can skirt the rules by providing "researchers" with anonymized data. All of them want this anonymized data for their own analytics reporting to measure success metrics and most will walk away when the spigot is closed.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  > they can skirt the rules by providing "researchers" with anonymized data. Probably, given the many past cases of academics using this kind of data to demonstrate de-anonymization attacks, with some very special vetting of who the researchers are and where their loyalties lie. Here's a decent writeup of their first big research-related privacy blunder: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Harvards-Privacy-Meltdown/128166 https://www.chronicle.com/article/Harvards-Privacy-Meltdown/...