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Since I noticed previously you were also reading Dark Pools (commented in another thread), I found that book to pile up evidence for (b) as well. Do you have s
by tom_b 12y ago
Since I noticed previously you were also reading Dark Pools (commented in another thread), I found that book to pile up evidence for (b) as well. Do you have similar takeaway from Dark Pools? In particular, in the early days of electronic trading, that book clearly makes the case that the hackers (or maybe mainly Josh Levine) were completely focused on disrupting a corrupt and "good old boy" network driven trading system.
But (and I say this after having read both the Lewis book and Dark Pools), I'm not entirely sure what to think about HFT (or more broadly, electronic trading in general) and market volatility.
It kind of seems like there is going to be some popularly accepted government regulation of electronic trading that my gut tells me will be more acceptable for the "other, more brazen pickpockets" than the new, despite the fact that we think choice (b) is better for investors.
- tptacek 12y agoThe best thing about Dark Pools is the narrative about the creation of Island and Archipelago and the regs changes that led to the NASDAQ ECNs. There's definitely a clearer "good guy" and "bad guy" in the ECN story: the human market makers are the bad guys in that story, as you can see by their refusal to quote in odd eighths. HFT is complicated in large part because it's not one thing. The best response to criticisms of HFT is to be wary of anyone who would try to lump a bunch of different entities with different motivations and different business models together based solely on the technology they're using. Unfortunately, that is in a nutshell what Lewis' book tries to do.