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A comment on What's the Least Impactful Way to Spend $300,000,000?. Parent comment

Re:What's the Least Impactful Way to Spend $300,000,000? by pembrook on Friday April 14, 2023 @05:05AM (#35567191)
Quant firms provide value to society, hence why they are compensated for it.

Liquidity and price discovery are useful things. Nobody would pay them otherwise.

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Re:What's the Least Impactful Way to Spend $300,000,000? by jabradoodle on Friday April 14, 2023 @05:28AM (#35567302)
If the definition of providing value to society = making a profit, then is selling heroin providing value to society?
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Re:What's the Least Impactful Way to Spend $300,000,000? by bheadmaster on Friday April 14, 2023 @06:50AM (#35567928)
> Liquidity and price discovery are useful things. Nobody would pay them otherwise.

Is there any other evidence of their usefulness beyond "people pay for it"?

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Re:What's the Least Impactful Way to Spend $300,000,000? by sokoloff on Friday April 14, 2023 @09:01AM (#35569105)
On the liquidity side, would you pay more for a security that you could easily and quickly sell with small slippage than you would for a security that could not be easily sold or only sold with a large slippage?

"People pay for [that]" because it's a genuinely useful property of an investment vehicle.

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