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I'm no financial or legal expert, but by market moving I am referring to data that moves the aggregate market in a fairly predictable direction. If jobs or the

I'm no financial or legal expert, but by market moving I am referring to data that moves the aggregate market in a fairly predictable direction. If jobs or the consumer confidence numbers go up, the market follows and vice versa. If your system gets this data before everyone else you essentially have a money-printing machine (at the expense of everyone else). If you report data that's valuable because the federal government uses it in monetary policy decisions, then just push it to your customers as soon as its available for a flat rate. When a company intentionally holds back data to make money on an incremental time difference, I'm sorry, that seems scammy and unethical to me. As to Bloomberg consoles, that seems like a slightly different case, but if they similarly tier, then it is also unethical IMO. Don't pit your customers against each other.

theorique 13y ago
In the trading game, there are very few things that move the broad market in a predictable direction. Simple correlation and causality get very, very hazy. It's not a simple matter of: * get data a little early * go long on the index * profit! A trader could execute all possible best-practices, and the numbers go the 'wrong' way. Or they go the 'right' way for a while, but then turn around as other traders cash out. Regardless, there's no guaranteed profit just because you have paid for early access. The presence of risk-taking traders on all different time scales in secondary markets means that there's liquidity and accurate price-formation at a range of different time scales. At the very shortest time-scales, all customers are already against each other - it's the nature of a very liquid market, where A's gain is B's loss and vice versa. But all this churning activity means that if you want to cash out your Apple stock, there's going to be a buyer right there on the other side, at all times. Without a deep reserve of risk traders willing to take the other side of every trade, liquidity is lost and capital is less likely to be attracted to the public markets.

theorique 13y ago

In the trading game, there are very few things that move the broad market in a predictable direction. Simple correlation and causality get very, very hazy. It's not a simple matter of: * get data a little early * go long on the index * profit! A trader could execute all possible best-practices, and the numbers go the 'wrong' way. Or they go the 'right' way for a while, but then turn around as other traders cash out. Regardless, there's no guaranteed profit just because you have paid for early access. The presence of risk-taking traders on all different time scales in secondary markets means that there's liquidity and accurate price-formation at a range of different time scales. At the very shortest time-scales, all customers are already against each other - it's the nature of a very liquid market, where A's gain is B's loss and vice versa. But all this churning activity means that if you want to cash out your Apple stock, there's going to be a buyer right there on the other side, at all times. Without a deep reserve of risk traders willing to take the other side of every trade, liquidity is lost and capital is less likely to be attracted to the public markets.