

The New Speed of Money, Reshaping Markets - MotorMouths
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/business/02speed.html?hpw

======
iwwr
It may well be that Skynet comes from some obscure piece of hardware used to
analyze the stock market.

On the plus side, the sub-millisecond lag arms race is a great boon for IT.

------
lowglow
I'd like to get into Automated Trading Systems. Does anyone have any
experience within this field?

~~~
Dilpil
I recently got into it. Proficiency with C++ is highly valued. Knowledge of
low level networking is valued as well.

Experience in telecoms, embedded systems, and video games industries is looked
upon highly.

The following is a list of firms that engage in proprietary trading, a good
deal of them hire software developers for automated trading systems:
[http://www.quantnet.com/quant-internships-graduate-
recruitme...](http://www.quantnet.com/quant-internships-graduate-recruitment-
list-firms/)

------
joe_the_user
The thing about the by-hand system is that the seat-holder both had a monopoly
and provided the service of keeping the market evenly liquid.

When trading becomes purely a commodity, it impels those at the center of
exchange process to get their money some other way. Remember that Bernie
Madoff's _ostensible_ business was electronic trading. Some have argued that
he stayed in business as long as he did not because people thought he was
honest but because people thought he was front-running (an illegal but
_sustainable_ business). The high-frequency trading system I've heard of sound
they are effectively front-running whether legal or not.

One argue that both short and long-term investing provide value to the economy
since the investors have to have some idea of the value of the underlying
stock. I would argue that anything that involves entirely gaming the exchange
process doesn't have that quality.

You could argue that if the high-frequency traders in the end take less rent
than the seat-holders previously did, then it's all good. Well, there's
problem that no one's supporting the market. You can point to one or another
immediate cause of the flash crash but I'd argue without some intentional
market-making, some version of another flash crash is going to be inevitable.

