
Trading Fortunes Depend on a Mysterious Antenna in an Empty Field - randomname2
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-12/mysterious-antennas-outside-cme-reveal-traders-furious-land-war
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d--b
This is ridiculous. Market authorities should disallow sub-centisecond trades,
and allocate the trades that fall on the same centisecond at random. That
would save a lot of people a lot of time and money...

~~~
MichaelGG
If they cared, they'd allow micropenny pricing. This would force competition
on price instead of just time.

~~~
d--b
Not sure that'd help. I think that would make the problem worse, because
actual market participants don't care about micro pennies.

When you buy a stock from your banker, you don't care that you buy it at 65 or
65.00001.

Same thing for time, you don't care that you send the order at
15:14:25.0000001 or 15:14:25.5

Markets should be tailored to the needs of its users.

~~~
21
> Markets should be tailored to the needs of its users.

Well, they are. HFTs do 70% of the volume, so the markets are tailored to
their needs.

~~~
d--b
Right, exchanges benefit from HFT in transaction fees. Which is why they have
little incentive to change anything.

~~~
dsacco
What about when exchanges pay out rebates to HFT firms for enhancing
liquidity?

~~~
d--b
There is value in having subsecond liquidity, not submillisecond.

~~~
d--b
Replying here since I cant comment further:

1\. Of course it's arbitrary. And the current time resolution (a computer tick
= one ten-millionth?) is just as arbitrary.

2\. The market is a man-made system, it's made by and for humans. It would
make sense that the time resolution of events is mapped to human perception:
You need subsecond liquidity because traders want to perceive their orders as
being immediate. But as soon as the order looks immediate, you don't need
further precision. The additional resolution is useless to anyone making
decisions and only encourages a stupid race that requires immense investments.

3\. Can you explain what you think is the value in submillisecond trading?

~~~
dsacco
_> Of course it's arbitrary. And the current time resolution (a computer tick
= one ten-millionth?) is just as arbitrary._

So why should we change it?

 _> The market is a man-made system, it's made by and for humans. It would
make sense that the time resolution of events is mapped to human perception:
You need subsecond liquidity because traders want to perceive their orders as
being immediate. But as soon as the order looks immediate, you don't need
further precision. The additional resolution is useless to anyone making
decisions and only encourages a stupid race that requires immense
investments._

I don't follow - by that logic, everything created by humans shouldn't have
resolution greater than what we can perceive. Does this hold for, say, HTTP
requests, or pings?

 _> Can you explain what you think is the value in submillisecond trading?_

It allows me to complete trades before the market turns against me. In the
absence of any particular harm, faster execution is better.

------
zyztem
First hand reports from a few years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sniperinmahwah.wordpr...](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com)

~~~
theocean154
sniper's stuff is awesome

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ricardobeat
On a broader perspective this is so stupid. Allocate space inside the DC
itself and rent it out to trading firms if that's the case, even more money to
be made!

~~~
Cacti
The exchanges aren't monolithic institutions, they have numerous integrations
with feeds from other exchanges and other order systems. Taking advantage of
that disparity is one of the ways HFT techniques can profit.

Also, not every fund can fit their computers into an exchange building, nor
would they necessarily want to.

~~~
ricardobeat
I was being sarcastic.

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givinguflac
I remember reading about the european version of this trading tech last year:
[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/11/priva...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/11/private-microwave-networks-financial-hft/)

Pretty cool but crazy at the same time.

------
philsnow
Can companies buy land in between towers owned by competitors, and erect
radio-opaque billboards ?

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pleboidal
Billions of what? People? Dollars?

~~~
matheweis
Not OP but title is from the ZeroHedge article, which clarifies "It could be
billions in revenues". The link may have been changed by HN to be closer to
the source, since ZeroHedge is mostly requoting it anyway:
[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-12/mysterious-
antenna-...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-12/mysterious-antenna-
emerges-empty-chicago-field-billions-depend-it)

~~~
pleboidal
Yeah, thanks for the downvotes everybody! The title is changed to the more
accurate headline, but fuck me for voicing any criticism!

Here's another shitty comment you can downvote. Have fun. This is what you get
for frivolous downvotes. More bile.

Fuck this karma-whore rating shitshow.

