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strongvigilance

What kind of depreciation do you get on crypto mining hardware though? Will that setup still be profitable in x months, when better performing hardware exists?
Re:Ask HN: UI Design for Financial Trading on Friday September 13, 2019 @02:56AM (#20959828)
Interesting - I have looked into the API, though TT tech support believe they can fix the issues I'm seeing. Any reason for choosing F#/WPF over C#/Winforms?

And agree 100% on Xtrader - very strange business decision to discontinue a 15 year old piece of software than thousands of users are willing to pay $1200 per month for!

Re:Ask HN: UI Design for Financial Trading on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @11:16AM (#20929143)
Interesting - so do you think it would be possible to have a JS/HTML5 app refresh at 60FPS?
Re:Ask HN: UI Design for Financial Trading on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @05:25AM (#20926448)
Not really sure, as it's not my field, but the graphics requirements are not about "drawing" - more about rapidly updating multiple grids of numbers without any lag.

Ask HN: UI Design for Financial Trading

I work as a financial futures trader, and the main software I use for order management and viewing market data is being discontinued in favour of a new version.The old software* has been around since the early 2000s, and is a Windows application written in c++. The newer one has a C++/Linux backend, but the UI is basde on Javascript/HTML5/Chromium.Having tried the new software, the UI...

( Read More... | 11 comments | 10 points | on HN )
Re: Daniel's review of Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt on Sunday April 13, 2014 @12:53PM (#7581873)
There have always been middlemen, as, especially with less liquid instruments, there won't necessarily be equal supply and demand from "natural" buyers and sellers. As markets have gone from floor trading, to point+click on computer screens, to automation of different levels of sophistication, efficiency has improved - people complain about HFT stealing pennies, but in the past, someone was stealing quarters. The difference is that the skills required have changed tremendously - a few years ago, it was all about being well connected or going to the right school - now it's all about how good your code is.

It's not particularly surprising that the loudest anti-HFT voices are guys whose profit margins have been killed by it.

Disclosure: my profit margins have been killed by HFT...

Re:Alcohol without the hangover? on Sunday November 17, 2013 @03:46PM (#6750771)
Seems like quite a strong possibility, given his background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Dismissal

I don't think the actual order type was a secret, just that some HFT firms figured out a way to use it which gave them an advantage over other HFT firms. The firms who didn't understand it lost out.
Like many vocal HFT critics, he was trying to play the same game, and was outcompeted.
Re:How to Get a Job at a High Frequency Trading Firm on Monday October 28, 2013 @09:42AM (#6626827)
I believe the profits have dropped a lot recently, as competition has driven down margins for everyone involved.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-06/how-the-robo...

Re:How to Get a Job at a High Frequency Trading Firm on Monday October 28, 2013 @09:29AM (#6626731)
Generally it's possible to colocate servers in the same datacentre as the exchange servers. This isn't really a competitive advantage though, as anyone who needs latency that low will be doing the same, and the costs will be relatively insignificant compared to salaries of people who can build the required systems.
Re:How to lose $172,222 a second for 45 minutes on Wednesday October 23, 2013 @07:36AM (#6598107)
Competition is already high, and colocating is not that expensive for anyone with the ability to compete.

A lot of the loudest criticism of HFT is that it's too competitive - a lot of people who used to make a comfortable living from the bid/ask spread are no longer able to due to computers driving down profit margin.

Re:How to lose $172,222 a second for 45 minutes on Tuesday October 22, 2013 @05:50AM (#6590702)
Why have a limit on how close people can be to the exchange? For one thing, everyone would just colo at exactly the minimum distance, achieving nothing. For another, ability to colo is not really an issue. If you wanted to create an HFT startup, colo is not going to be a major cost compared to hiring developers.
Re:Einstein and the Great Fed Robbery on Saturday September 21, 2013 @05:26AM (#6422455)
As far as I'm aware, the exact time of release of the FOMC statement can vary by a few seconds. Nanex seem to have assumed that the release comes from Washington, but I would guess that one of the agencies that receives the embargoed data has permission to distribute it at multiple locations simultaneously. That seems like the simplest explanation for Chicago and New York reacting at the same time.
Re:Einstein and the Great Fed Robbery on Saturday September 21, 2013 @05:19AM (#6422441)
Yes - most journalists/analysts prefer to be wrong together than wrong alone, so there is usually a lot of groupthink. The previous fed minutes suggested that most members wanted to wait to taper, unless data improved, and data didn't improve. It seemed obvious to me that the taper was nowhere near a done deal.
Re:Einstein and the Great Fed Robbery on Saturday September 21, 2013 @05:16AM (#6422433)
Indeed - it's worth noting that on the non-farm payroll figure (which is closely watched by markets) this month, most markets jumped in the wrong direction a split second early, before violently reversing.
Re:Low pay and the rise of the machines on Monday September 09, 2013 @01:54PM (#6354992)
Indeed. In fact, when economists talk about full employment, they don't even mean 100% - it's thought that at least some unemployment is needed to control inflation.

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

Re:German election diary: Posters everywhere but no attacks on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @09:57AM (#6283424)
Perhaps this is partly due to the multitude of parties, which in turn is due to the nature of the electoral system?

In a two party system, a lot of people feel like they are voting for the lesser of two evils, so negative campaigning is presumably far more helpful to your cause.

If you have to compete with multiple parties for votes, you need to offer more than simply criticism of the opposition.

Re:Peers call for a pardon for Alan Turing [video] on Saturday July 20, 2013 @09:10AM (#6075109)
Indeed - the current proposal suggests that the persecution was only wrong because he was a war hero, and not because of the injustice of it.

I'd imagine there must be some victims who are still alive today.

London has a big financial sector, so a lot of the big pay packets probably come from there - hedge funds, banks, HFT etc.

See here:

http://jobs.efinancialcareers.co.uk/Information_Technology.h...

To be fair, this kind of performance would probably be seen over any sample of the brokerage house clients.

Even professional mutual fund managers systematically underperform the market.

Re:Quantitative Finance Reading List on Thursday April 25, 2013 @03:35PM (#5609358)
To an extent - I'm a trader first, programmer second - learnt the latter to help with the former.
Re:Quantitative Finance Reading List on Thursday April 25, 2013 @03:17PM (#5609251)
I'd second the Harris book - very good intro to trading and markets.
Re:Quantitative Finance Reading List on Thursday April 25, 2013 @03:13PM (#5609231)
A couple of years old, but this is (IMO) a much better list: http://quantivity.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/how-to-learn-algo...

The 30+ generic C++ books in the posted list says a lot, and many of the more finance-oriented books on the list are very low on signal-to-noise.

Like the numerous 9/11 conspiracies, it fails the Occam's Razor test. Even if there was a conspiracy, how many people would have to be in on it, and how would you keep it secret? And if there were such nefarious people in government/industry, wouldn't it be easier for them just to pay someone to set off a real bomb, rather than trying to stage an explosion?
Re:How to identify algorithmic trading strategies on Monday April 22, 2013 @02:42PM (#5591013)
Structuring a trade to reduce downside risk while profiting from unanticipated random events is easy - just buy options. The problem is that everyone else knows this, so they're priced accordingly.
Re:Children should be allowed to get bored on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:42AM (#5431892)
It's slightly sad when science journalism relies on "an expert says", without feeling the need to reference any data.

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