rondon

You need to draw lots of lines for lots of different personal beliefs. Prop 8 is an easy one to know which side is on the right side of universal human rights. You are free to feel that gays shouldn't marry, just like you are free to say that women shouldn't be CEOs, but you disqualify yourself from being the head of a group like Mozilla when you do that.

I get what you are saying and i'm sure your analogy is correct in some cases.

Wall St. has a long history of fraud and skimmers so it is understandable to say the HTF isn't that bad relative to other things.

But we should be trying to make the markets more fair and give people more confidence that everyone isn't getting ripped off.

Yes, in your example the third party has witnessed a change in demand and is now changing his prices.

In my example the Gas Station is doing a bait-and-switch where the price was 3.99 until you pull out your credit card. HF Traders are not doing a bait-and-switch since they are separate entities than the original seller but they are making money off the same principal as a bait and switch.

Someone pulls into a gas station that says gas is 3.99 a gallon and expects to pay 3.99 a gallon to fill up his car.

Should the price increase to 4.00 as soon as he stops in front of the pump to 'reflect the new demand'?

I don't want that service, I want to buy something without someone else inserting themselves as a middleman.

That is crazy logic. Because international telephone calls used to cost over 12 cents a minute I should let my ISP charge me 1 cent a minute whenever I use Skype internationally?

Good point. You should ignore the previous comment based on a technicality. Since I didn't specify that the 100,000 share purchase was not actually 3 different orders

I guess you don't quite understand how HFT works?

The simplest example is like this:

1. Bob sees that 10,000 share of MSFT are for sell on exchange X at $50.00 and also 30,000 share are for sell on exchange Y at $50.00 and 60,000 shares are for sell on exchange Z at $50.00 2. Bob attempts to buy 100,000 shares of MSFT at $50.00. 3. The HF trader sees the 60,000 order get filled at 50.00 and reasonably assumes that someone is trying to buy more than 60,000 shares right now. 4. He buys the remaining 40,000 shares at $50.00 before Bob's trade is executed. 5. The HF trader immediately lists the 40,000 shares at 50.01

Do you understand how the HF trader is injecting himself into the transaction?

" seller of the house has every right to reject my +500 bid in order to wait for a better deal if they think one is coming along"

You know that someone else just said they were going to offer 1000 over asking. The seller doesn't know that. You have an advantage.

" you are assuming that there is a fixed price for the things you are buying when there aren't."

When Bob offers stock X for 5.00 that is fixed until he cancels that order. Just like the milk, it is 5.00 until the store changes the price.

Your analogy implies that I need all the properties on a block. That would be similar to a hostile takeover where someone needs to buy 50+% of a company to take control.

Are you aware that HFT are not making their money by detecting hostile takeovers?

So who asked you to provide any service of risk-mitigation, liquidity injection,etc..?

This is about 2 parties that are ready to agree to a transaction and a 3rd party injecting themselves into the transaction and taking a penny of the deal.

Imagine that you go to the grocery store to buy some milk and as you are about to checkout someone buys your $5.00 milk and tells you the price is now $5.01. And that the $0.01 increase includes spoilage insurance. Maybe you like that, maybe you don't, the issue is that you had no choice in the matter.

The person I want to buy the stock from is only offering the shares at 15.00 and I think that is a fair price. Why should someone jump in between the two of us and buy the stock for 15.00 then offer them to me for 15.01.

This would be like going to an open house where you here someone say "I'm going to offer $1,000 over asking" then going to the seller and offering $500 over asking. Then going to the first person and saying you'll take that offer of $1,000 over asking.

You could claim that you provided liquidity and that you helped speed up the transactions but at the end of the day you made $500 for undercutting someone who already intended to make a purchase.

I've done very little HTML,CSS but I feel confident that I could become proficient as a front-end dev. But it is going to take months. I assume you are saying that these companies are hiring based on expected performance at 1+ years. They don't expect the person who gets the job to be making major front end code changes the first month?

Maybe Kevin Drum can provide the government a live encrypted feed of his family's bathroom and bedroom. I'm sure they will only crack the encryption if they think a bad guy is on the video.

If you raise the US Minimum wage to $20 an hour you will immediately see people move their companies to Mexico,China,etc.. So that will only make the problem worse. Instead of making $10 an hour those employees will be making $0.

It is a fossil from a time where people could only work when physically in their office. Not a fossil as in it existed millions of years ago

If you want to buy some sparkly jewelry to signify engagement I highly recommend moissanite. It looks better than Diamond because it is double refractive. Also, no one will be able to tell a difference. 3 times I've taken my wife's rings to jewelery stores to have it cleaned or have a small stone replaced and every time I have to tell the Jeweler that it is moissanite. If you do tell people it is moissanite be prepared to hear "Didn't you want a 'real' stone?' or " It looks dirty " especially from Jewelers.

Obviously! If I purchased 1 hour of Day Care I would expect to receive 1 hour of day care.

However, if I paid someone to clean my house I would expect it to be clean after they were done. I don't care how long it takes. If it takes 10 hours and the floors a filthy I'm going to be upset. If it takes 1 hour and everything is very clean I'm going to be happy.

When you purchase a product or service do you ever consider how long someone spent making that product/service when deciding what to buy?

Imagine someone saying something like "That Toyota Car is exactly what I'm looking for, but I know that the workers at the GM factory spent way more time building the GM car, so I'm going to buy that GM car instead."