its pretty amazing how few people seem to have base domain knowledge of core market infrastructure considering how many people work in that area and that it isn't particularly tricky. It certainly colours the opinions of everyone here jumping to entirely silly conclusions.

I can read (and have read) Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of The Art of Computer Programming and thereby acquire a considerable amount of "base domain knowledge" in that area.

I'm not aware of a correspondingly simple way of acquiring base domain knowledge of the topics we are discussing here. Perhaps you can suggest some books?

This is OK as a book, I read much of it many years ago:

The Complete Guide to Capital Markets for Quantitative Professionals (McGraw-Hill Library of Investment & Finance) Hardcover – 1 Dec 2006 by Alex Kuznetsov

A book on trading is prob more useful. There are many public specs of exchanges. For example:

http://www.cmegroup.com/confluence/display/EPICSANDBOX/MDP+3...

The main thing to learn is orderbook building mechanics