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A comment on D.E. Shaw and how computer geeks and English majors transformed Wall St. (2018). Parent comment

Re:D.E. Shaw and how computer geeks and English majors trans... by nojito on Saturday July 25, 2020 @04:47PM (#23952270)
Most if not all the highly successful and most secretive quant funds execute hundreds of thousands trades per day...while not considered to be "HFT"...the idea of trading hundreds or thousands positions per second is quite a high frequency.
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Re:D.E. Shaw and how computer geeks and English majors trans... by smabie on Saturday July 25, 2020 @05:12PM (#23952464)
Most quant shops are not turning over thousands of positions everyday, the trading costs alone would be ridiculous.

But regardless, HFT usually means latency arb, not just trading a lot. There's a misperception that quant funds are making money on slight mispricings, but while I can't speak for all funds of course, this isn't generally true. Quant funds are much closer to buy and hold long term investors than they are to HFT firms.

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Re:D.E. Shaw and how computer geeks and English majors trans... by hchz on Saturday July 25, 2020 @05:01PM (#23952395)
This is algo trading, or execution optimization.

They aren't measuring the market / order book and then reacting at high frequency. They are reacting at low frequency and then the execution is optimized to minimize losses caused by market feedback.

This is a very important distinction if you hold the view that HFT risks destabilizing markets.

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