5 ms·

The body politic. People program computers to exchange messages furiously, to no external effect besides power consumed. Then they go buy yachts. It's all perf

• eru 4y ago
  I'm not sure how this 'stealing' is supposed to work.
  • ncmncm 4y ago
    The stock market is a zero-sum game. Every single penny taken out was a penny put in. Money going in is people's pensions, largely. As a society, we like to reward people who do things that are useful: feed, house, clothe, warm, transport, educate, protect, medicate, lately amuse people, and get money that may be exchanged for those services, or yachts. HFT traders provide none of those, nor anything comparable, but get yachts anyway.
    • Kranar 4y ago
      >The stock market is a zero-sum game. Every single penny taken out was a penny put in. Money going in is people's pensions, largely. Ah, so you lack a basic understanding of how the stock market works, but think you're qualified to make very strong statements about it.
      • ncmncm 4y ago
        Trades batched by second would provide as much liquidity as anybody could use, without the yachts.
        • eru 4y ago
          You can start a new exchange that does this batching. Btw, you need to be careful, because people might still race to be the last (or first) to contribute to a batch. They'd race to be the first, if tied prices within a batch are resolved in favour of the earlier bird. Otherwise, they would race to be the last, so they have the most information available when deciding on their price (and so that they can change their mind until the last nano-second.)
          • tsbertalan 4y ago
            And if ties within that second were resolved randomly, what perverse optimizing would you predict?
    • Nevermark 4y ago
      Well traders do provide liquidity which saves pensioners enormous sums compared to selling retirement assets at will into illiquid markets Granted traders can play other games, but their primary benefit to others is significant