How High Frequency Trading Benefits All Investors

Re:How High Frequency Trading Benefits All Investors by andrewcooke on Wednesday March 17, 2010 @01:51PM (#1199173)

so how do you win? my naive impression is that speed must play an important part, or it wouldn't be called high frequency.

(so speed is important to you, just as water is important to a fish; it may not be what you focus on, but that doesn't mean that it's not critical).

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Re:How High Frequency Trading Benefits All Investors by brownegg on Wednesday March 17, 2010 @01:57PM (#1199192)

It's crucial, for sure. But there are trades for which it is the only determinant, and those are dangerous waters.

There are market participants who make their money on pure latency arbitrage; it is a 100% speed game (because anyone can figure out that 1 - 1 = 0).

The majority of HFT falls into the "you have to be fast enough to not get run over" bucket.

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Re:How High Frequency Trading Benefits All Investors by andrewcooke on Wednesday March 17, 2010 @02:41PM (#1199308)

ok, so i think the original thread here is arguing that "being run over" is just the market doing what it would do anyway, without you playing in the traffic and endangering us all...

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