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A comment on A High Frequency Trader's Apology, Pt 2.

Re:A High Frequency Trader's Apology, Pt 2 by tolos on Thursday April 26, 2012 @01:47PM (#3895181)
What makes me uneasy about HFT is the speed in which things happen.

For example, I believe the BATS IPO that happened last month began trading around $15, and was below $1 in about 900ms before trading was halted. (Nanex.net has news postings about these kinds of things, and I wouldn't mind hearing other people's opinion about the site)

I guess my question is, is it possible for traders to make money in the short term (hours/minutes) or is that forever in the land of robots now?

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Re:A High Frequency Trader's Apology, Pt 2 by sailfrog on Thursday April 26, 2012 @02:27PM (#3895419)
Insofar as Nanex is concerned remember they are attempting to sell you a product, so be aware of their motivations before swallowing any unsubstantiated assumptions. With that said from what I have seen their charts are accurate but the interpretation of what they mean is sometimes a bit dramatic :)

I can't speak directly to the BATS IPO debacle but I can say that when the NBBO in a symbol is locked or crossed (market speak for the bid and ask being the same or being inverted) matching engines can ignore the NBBO. This results in trades being executing at prices all over the map and can explain how a stock can go from $15 to $1 almost immediately.

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