I can't speak for him, but it terrifies me that we expend so much energy and capital to completely remove any sort of human reflection from the operations of our global economy.

So you're on hacker news, but you're terrified about automation and telecommunications, because it "removes any sort of human reflection". But only in this one particular application no doubt. Fitting that the towers are in Holland, maybe you can go and throw some clogs at them.

Well said, but Belgium isn't in Holland ;) For some reason a relatively large number of players in this space are Dutch though.

Oops, my mistake. I tend to lump the Flemish in with the Dutch without thinking.

I don't think reading some news and HFT have the same impact on the global economy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group

What do you believe was the impact of KCG on the global economy?

Take these graphs into account when answering: http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/flash_crash_flash_in_...

Great link, but I would say still more than reading HN ;)

Human reflection used to play a major part in trade execution, and people used to pay a per-share spread tax measured in whole dollars as a result; all the way into the 1990s, that tax was maintained by the collusion of faceless computer programs no wait that's wrong I meant to say humans.

Automated trading has probably been an unqualified win for normal investors.

>I can't speak for him, but it terrifies me that we expend so much energy and capital to completely remove any sort of human reflection from the operations of our global economy.

The mistake you're making is thinking that human reflection is an inherently "good" thing to have. Humans have cost their companies orders of magnitude more money than algorithms have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rogue_traders

We aren't removing human reflection from the operations of our economy. High frequency traders don't make decisions about the allocation of capital. They _can't_, because they don't hold positions overnight; they sell their inventory by the end of the day. Actual investment decisions -- which bonds or stocks to buy -- are still almost entirely made by human beings. HFT and algos only comes up when it's time to implement these decisions, and even then play a very minor role in the financial system.

If you want to understand how minor, compare the cash piles HFT companies manage with cash piles real economic players manage: The biggest HFT firms I know of are Virtu & Knight/GETCO, which both have a bit over $1 billion under management. Compare that the CALPERS pension fund's $300 billion, or with Goldman Sachs or Norways' sovereign wealth fund, both of which have about $900 billion in assets, or with PIMCO's bond fund ($2000 billion) or BlackRock's total AUM ($4500 billion).