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Fairness is a fundamental bedrock of systems like this. Even if the amount of money HFT firms extract does not have a measurable effect on the economy, it harms
by hackinthebochs 13y ago
Fairness is a fundamental bedrock of systems like this. Even if the amount of money HFT firms extract does not have a measurable effect on the economy, it harms trust which can have serious consequences.
- harryh 13y agoBut people only think it's unfair because people like Michael Lewis have done such a bad job explaining it to them! They think that HFT makes them materially worse off when it, in fact, does the exact opposite. We should just cave to that misconception?
- hackinthebochs 13y agoBut if a firm is making a big sell of a stock, as a representative of institutional investors, then it is making regular folks worse off. Misconceptions should certainly be eliminated, but the fact that HFT firms require colocation does not pass the smell test of fairness. No amount of explanations can eliminate that.
- harryh 13y agoRegular folks aren't buying into firms with proprietary knowledge that deeply care about trading speed. They're buying into index funds or dumb mutual funds. These sorts of funds are the ones that benefit from more accurate and faster updating prices at the expense of the Bill Ackmans & David Einhorns of the world.
- hackinthebochs 13y agoI don't know enough to question your point, so I'll take your word for it. But the smell test is still strong here, even if HFT is neutral or beneficial to regular folk. You'll have a hard time convincing people with a complicated argument in the face of this obvious signal for unfairness.
- harryh 13y agoI agree with you about having a hard time. This is exactly what's so frustrating about the Michael Lewis book that kicked off the present round of controversy. See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7548124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7548124