Studies find fast traders get data from SEC seconds early

Re:Studies find fast traders get data from SEC seconds early by apaprocki on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @10:11AM (#8527218)

You're just making allegations. It says in the contract that the subscription price is based upon how many subscribers subscribe to the service (they need to cover their costs of implementing 24/7 support and a help desk). It probably isn't public, but Google-fu turns up some older information:

http://contracts.onecle.com/edgar-online/trw.svc.1998.09.11....

    A.   Broadcast Service Subscription Charge
    This charge will be set on October 1, 1998 based on the number of signed
    contracts received by that date. The table below contains a 14-month price at
    various subscription levels:

    SUBSCRIBERS AS OF
    OCTOBER 1, 1998                PRICE
                          
    1 to 8                        $152,172
    9 to 15                         92,967
    16 to 25                        55,346
    25+                             42,179

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Re:Studies find fast traders get data from SEC seconds early by rlucas on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @11:06AM (#8527527)

This table strongly suggests that there's something like a "slice of pie" pricing scheme in the government's contract with the service provider. That's a very common arrangement where the per-subscriber pricing is very high for few subscribers and drops as more are added.

At the limit, the slice of pie pricing is completely continuous and each incremental subscriber lowers the cost for everyone. This one may be coarser grained.

Nothing inherently shady or anticompetitive about such a scheme. It also tends to arise where governments (like SEC, or like county clerk offices) have a dual mission of providing public access while offsetting costs, and need/want to outsource it to a for profit service provider.

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Re:Studies find fast traders get data from SEC seconds early by crdoconnor on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @10:16AM (#8527251)

$150,000 = you are paying for early access to insider data. You are NOT paying for a fucking help desk at that price.

Edit: downvoting does not change this fact either.

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Re:Studies find fast traders get data from SEC seconds early by ddeck on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @11:46AM (#8527789)

According to the WSJ article on this, the current price is around $1500 per month. [1]

Also, note that you are paying to receive an electronic feed of a company's public SEC filings, which include filings detailing purchase and sale of stock by the company's employees, which are called "insiders" in this context.

The phrase "insider data" conjures images of insider trading, which relies on trading on material non-public information, and something quite different.

[1] http://online.wsj.com/articles/fast-traders-are-getting-data... (paywall, Google the title to bypass)

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Re:Studies find fast traders get data from SEC seconds early by Hello71 on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @10:41AM (#8527397)

you are being downvoted for picking a number out of context and unnecessarily provocative language.

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