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HFT gives me a minor amount of hope for our regulatory environment: the forces and popular opinion of Big Finance all oppose it, but regulators continue to allo
by cynicalkane 12y ago
HFT gives me a minor amount of hope for our regulatory environment: the forces and popular opinion of Big Finance all oppose it, but regulators continue to allow it.
The short answer is that HFT is like Wal-Mart: it's trendy and cool to complain about it, but in terms of providing better and faster inventory to ordinary customers, it works better than everything that came before.
Except Wal-Mart is hated for being (allegedly) bad for poor workers, electronic trading's victims have primarily been the Wall Street old boys' club. Why the public is convinced this is a bad thing is beyond me.
- harryh 12y agoThis is what really sucks about that Michael Lewis book. He could have told a great story to the public about how everything they had been told was wrong and that the HFT nerds (just like the baseball nerds) had used technology to make the world a better place. He has the talent to do this so well. But he fucked up and bought the story the buy side scammers were selling him hook, line, and sinker. It's such a bummer.
- conistonwater 12y agoSome stories are hard to tell, and even harder to sell.
- harryh 12y agoOf course. I do think there is a great story to tell and sell here though. Matt Levine took a stab at explaining what that story could look like: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-31/michael-lewis-doesn-t-like-high-frequency-traders http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-31/michael-lew...