4 ms·
> Low latency trading is so crucial to the economy that the market mostly shuts down at 4pm every day and takes weekends and holidays, adding 2^47 nanosecond de
by pgwhalen 5y ago
> Low latency trading is so crucial to the economy that the market mostly shuts down at 4pm every day and takes weekends and holidays, adding 2^47 nanosecond delays every week without much outcry.
To this I would say: grocery stores (which serve as a sort of middleman to a whole host of necessary goods and are clearly crucial to the economy) close overnight without much outcry.
(To be clear, I think grocery stores are far more important to the economy/society than HFTs, but I think your argument for why is poor)
- cma 5y agoOne grocery store doesn't bury another by being humanly imperceptibly faster at returning carts than the other by a microsecond, and if they were forced by the structure of the market to spend tons of money on that before investing in being open 24/7 which real customers care far more about and provides far more value, it would seem really weird and like something was really messed up with market incentives in the grocery store industry.
- pgwhalen 5y ago> One grocery store doesn't bury another by being humanly imperceptibly faster at returning carts than the other by a microsecond One trading strategy being faster than another does not automatically make it better. This is a common misconception.
- cma 5y agoThere are many, I'm only talking about the ones that get an edge through latency arbitrage.
- pgwhalen 5y agoSure, but at that point I would argue you metaphor is not very useful. One convenience store would likely "bury" another if it were one block closer to its customers than the other. I wouldn't say the food store industry was "really messed up with market incentives" because of it.
- cma 5y agoA better example would be two stores were equidistant and the market structure made it make economic sense for one store to pay enormous amounts to have itself jacked up and moved one millimeter closer. A block closer is massively human perceivable, but we're talking about stuff far below human reaction times.