The Higher States of Bromine

Re:The Higher States of Bromine by ATsch on Sunday December 15, 2019 @06:17PM (#21799657)

Market making is indeed a useful activity, in isolation. And market making is indeed technically what HFT companies do.

However, pouring unspeakable amounts of money, watts and person-hours into completely unnecessary and wasteful infrastructure just because emergent properties of a system mean that billion dollar companies and their owners can make a lot of money by being a picosecond faster than each other in an eternal battle is of extremely questionable utility.

What exactly do we as a society get in exchange?

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Re:The Higher States of Bromine by bigtiger on Monday December 16, 2019 @12:13AM (#21800946)

We get markets that are incredibly fair and nearly frictionless on a global scale.

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Re:The Higher States of Bromine by ATsch on Monday December 16, 2019 @05:27AM (#21802099)

How much fairer and frictionlessier do they become for every picosecond? Is there a limit to fairness and frictionlessyness?

Arguing about HFT feels like you're questioning people about why they're spending billions on excavating single, individual sand grains and the defense you get is "well, sand is an incredibly important building material. It is used in concrete, and we wouldn't have modern society without it". Sure that's true, but why is it that nobody can tell me how what you're doing is actually necessary for that.

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Re:The Higher States of Bromine by KSteffensen on Monday December 16, 2019 @10:56AM (#21803967)

Also, from a control engineering point of view, a lot more unstable.

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Re:The Higher States of Bromine by rini17 on Monday December 16, 2019 @05:21AM (#21802068)

With market "liquidity" that evaporates in milliseconds exactly when it's needed most...

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Re:The Higher States of Bromine by spookthesunset on Monday December 16, 2019 @12:58AM (#21801089)

Better HFT than bitcoin...

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