Re:Timekeeping in Financial Exchanges
by beagle3 on Sunday October 11, 2020 @04:15PM
(#24748743)
There’s a relevant joke:
Two people on a hike see an obviously hungry mountain lion in the distance running towards them.
One of them quickly starts changing his hiking shoes to running shoes; to which the other responds “do you really think these shoes will let you outrun the mountain lion?” To which the first responds: “I don’t need to outrun the mountain lion, I only need to outrun you”
Whether it’s 1ms or 1s makes no difference; for a class of strategies, any time advantage can tilt the average from “unprofitable” to “profitable” when you are faster than others - and the sums changing hands are huge (trillions notional or even thousands of trillions per day). A tiny advantage easily translates into a lot of money.
Two people on a hike see an obviously hungry mountain lion in the distance running towards them. One of them quickly starts changing his hiking shoes to running shoes; to which the other responds “do you really think these shoes will let you outrun the mountain lion?” To which the first responds: “I don’t need to outrun the mountain lion, I only need to outrun you”
Whether it’s 1ms or 1s makes no difference; for a class of strategies, any time advantage can tilt the average from “unprofitable” to “profitable” when you are faster than others - and the sums changing hands are huge (trillions notional or even thousands of trillions per day). A tiny advantage easily translates into a lot of money.