A veteran programmer explains how the stock market became “rigged”

Re:A veteran programmer explains how the stock market became... by dllthomas on Monday April 07, 2014 @01:49PM (#7548068)

Your English broke down there, and I'm not sure what you're asking. "Why would anyone but HFT traders want to move 10K lots through the market?"?

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Re:A veteran programmer explains how the stock market became... by ThomPete on Monday April 07, 2014 @01:56PM (#7548112)

Sorry English is not my first language and sometimes I end up writing convoluted sentences.

Let me rephrase then.

Why would anyone but HFT traders need to move 10K lots through the market?

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Re:A veteran programmer explains how the stock market became... by dllthomas on Monday April 07, 2014 @02:18PM (#7548237)

"Sorry English is not my first language and sometimes I end up writing convoluted sentences."

No worries at all. I certainly didn't mean to imply any sort of a judgement; I just needed clarification.

"Why would anyone but HFT traders need to move 10K lots through the market?"

To a first approximation, it's never the HFT traders that need to move 10K lots. In commodities, it's big producers and consumers - Chevron needs to secure crude stock, ADM needs to buy up a ton of corn, some mega-farm (or co-op of large farms) wants to lock in a price on what they're producing, &c. In equities, it's institutional investors, hedge funds, and possibly exceedingly wealthy individuals, who have decided they want to hold many more or many fewer of something. It's clearly going to be a big player - transacting 10k lots of a stock priced at $10 would be $10 million. Most people - including HFTs - aren't trying to move millions of dollars in one direction in a short time. Those who are have resources, almost by definition.

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