
Humidity in New Jersey impeding radio transmissions and slowing stock trades - Element_
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-03/this-heat-wave-s-so-bad-it-s-even-slowing-down-u-s-stock-trades
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analog31
Sounds like a perfect opportunity to sell index futures. Refractive index,
that is. ;-)

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Faaak
Maybe that's a good incentive to take into account environmental externalities
?

/s

~~~
kimdotcom
That was good.

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patrickg_zill
It is not really affecting stock trading, but it is affecting HFT trading,
where many thousands of bids are made each second.

What I mean is that if you wanted to actually buy or sell stocks you would not
notice the difference.

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Uberphallus
One of my favourite articles on radio and HFT:
[https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/hft-in-my-
ba...](https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/hft-in-my-backyard-ii/)

~~~
digi_owl
Reminds me of how compact motors and wireless telegraphs were combined so that
small, fast, motorboats could meet cargo vessels outside New York and
telegraph back their cargo to some trader on Wall Street...

~~~
dingaling
Later, DHL was formed to fly bills of lading by commercial flights from the
West coast ports to Hawaii ahead of the ships arriving. So by the time they
arrived the cargo could be offloaded without delay.

~~~
dredmorbius
Source?

Hrm, here:

[http://wap.dhl.com/info/history.html](http://wap.dhl.com/info/history.html)

~~~
gothroach
Interesting read - I had not realized that DHL had started in the US, let
alone in San Francisco. Not having dealt with them directly much, I had
thought they were a European company. Not that it's the same company after
being bought out.

~~~
dredmorbius
And: land's price-inelasticity means that a land value tax (LVT; property,
exclusive of improvements) _must_ decrease its exchange value. Cook County's
reaal estate tax includes improvements, and hence isn't a perfect LVT. But it
approaches the concept.

[https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2015/04/01/why-
henry...](https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2015/04/01/why-henry-george-
had-a-point)

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madengr
Meh, they need to use gravity waves; not affected by dielectric constant.
Maybe a spinning mass that is frequency modulated. I just need to patent that
and be funded by some wealthy traders.

Seriously though, I’m surprised they are not using direct path, deeply buried
air-line coax. Has to be TEM propogation or else group delay is too high, so
rectangular waveguide won’t work. Circular may work; I need to brush up on my
EM.

~~~
gpderetta
Eh, too much energy required for gravitational waves. But I think that
particle accelerators and giant neutrino detectors have been at least half
seriously considered. I think that, although the impulse pretty much travel at
c and can tunnel though anything, the lenght sampling period of the impulse
required to distinguish it from noise would defeat the latency advantage.

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cosmon0t
I can't wait of the era of quantum entanglement HFT /s

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reaperducer
Thanks to spooky action, I can lose my money before I even place the trade!

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OldHand2018
Markets stay synchronized via continuous arbitrage. US equity trading centers
in New York while options trading centers in Chicago. Slowing the data
transmission to the Cboe data center in New Jersey slows its transmission to
Chicago, and thus provides _increased_ opportunity for HFT traders to earn
money. If you value fairness, this is a bad thing.

~~~
coldtea
Bids should be made only through a turn-based system, with ample time to
delete any advantage (or harm) from "data transmission" delays (1 minute for
example).

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Jedi72
This makes a lot of sense to me. What actual economic value is being captured
by HFT?

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hartator
HFT means several banks are competiting for your orders very aggressively
allowing a tighter spread. So, you sell a bit higher, and buy a bit lower.
This is highly beneficial.

~~~
panarky
HFT allows the faster trader to see that you're trying to buy (or sell), put
their order to buy (or sell) in ahead of yours, then turn around fill your buy
order at a higher price (or your sell order at a lower price).

HFT allows better-connected traders to front-run you. You don't get the best
price because the HFT guy extracted risk-free profits for himself at your
expense.

[https://www.barrons.com/articles/BL-
SWB-27750](https://www.barrons.com/articles/BL-SWB-27750)

~~~
Raidion
Front running and HFT are two different things. Front running implies that you
have access to the orders or other information and the ability to get your
order in ahead of others. This is at worst, illegal as you're trading on non-
public information (if you get an earnings report early), and at best, bad for
business as front running would be a "tax" on every stock being sold on an
exchange. This basically means that the exchange becomes less valuable
(because you have to pay more for that exchange) and other brokers have the
ability to offer "lower" prices for the same stock at the same moment in time
as they can say that they're not providing advanced information. Not to say
that it doesn't happen, but there is some "magic hand of the market" involved.

Front running is accomplished by HFT, but not all HFT is front running. HFT is
simply the ability to execute trades quickly on new information, like earnings
reports, fed meeting notes, etc. HFT back in the 17th century would simply
have been having the fastest couriers and horses to carry news, now it's
having the fastest software and data connections. HFT has a couple beneficial
sides too, as it tightens the bid/ask spread.

Basically don't confuse a technology that can be used for bad purposes, to be
the problem, blame the brokers and the regulators that allow it to happen.

~~~
munk-a
With the current rules in place this isn't illegal, it would be if you coerced
the information through some out-of-band system i.e. "Hey bob tell me what
you're going to do five minutes before you do it and there's a nickle in it
for you" but currently HFT front running is taking advantage of market
arbitrage anomalies and trend prediction along with quick response to news
events.

HFT adds nothing to the markets of value[1] and lowers the value average
players are able to extract.

[1] except liquidity which they usually don't add in a useful manner, they
will tend to make highly liquid stocks more liquid while not adding any
liquidity to stocks that are being harmed by illiquidity.

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OscarCunningham
Is this what they mean by "liquidity crisis"?

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stillworks
Not sure what the article is even trying to say.

The typical HFT firm will have it's computers colocated inside the exchange
and will be working the order books of instruments listed on that specific
exchange.

There are some "complicated" smoke and mirror setups for eg where execution
reports of the HFT are "captured" by some "big broker" on the street and HFT's
trades are booked by the big broker, but again, the big broker's computer is
also in this case colocated in the venue.

What is exactly slowing down HFT ? What is the overlap of instruments between
these venues ?

~~~
baybal2
This is, I believe, a setup specifically for inter-exchange arbitrage, front-
running

~~~
hueving
Inter-exchange arbitrage is not front-running because they are using public
information.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running)

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thinkcontext
I thought the fastest hft systems used optics. That seems much more likely to
be effected by humidity than short range radio.

~~~
virtuallynathan
The radio route between NYC and ORD is quite a bit faster than the fastest
fiber path, its about 8.5ms vs 13.1ms. They have much better as-the-crow-flies
paths, and the transmission latency is lower.

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matt_the_bass
I’d love to learn about the physics of “why" this happens. Anyone have a good
reference?

~~~
blattimwind
HFT links use microwave frequencies. Water absorbs microwave radiation quite
well (cf. microwave oven); as the water content (humidity) of air increases,
so does microwave absorption. Conversely, signal power delivered to the
receiver drops, and SNR decreases, making reception more difficult.

Water should intuitively have a lower velocity factor, too, so waves might
actually propagate more slowly in high humidity air compared to dry air.

~~~
matt_the_bass
Thanks! So the underlayi g issue is less SNR so higher error rate and lower
throughout. Is that correct?

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nicetryguy
NJ here. Feels like Florida the last few days. Ugh

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ppurka
32°C is considered a "heat wave?"

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sambull
And as our atmosphere is warmed by us we will have increased humidity. The
stock market is the least of our worries

~~~
remote_phone
No, that’s not how it works. That’s a 1 dimensional view.

We will have more wild variations of weather, so some places will get much,
much more humid and others will get much much drier. And maybe the same place
will get wetter and drier in the same season. It will be disastrous, but in a
wilder and more unpredictable way.

~~~
Applejinx
Absolutely correct. What's happening is the increase of total energy in a
titanic, global chaotic system. By definition, and even in a purely
mathematical model, you'll get more intense 'outlier' events in both range and
statistical behavior. In real life, exactly the same thing happens and is
happening.

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cyberpunk0
Cry me a river. How will greedy stock traders extract money from the world at
breakneck pace now?

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1over137
Oh no! Not slower stock trades! Meanwhile, in nearby Quebec, at least 15
people are dead from this heatwave.

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melling
The intense human desire to be snarky?

You can understand why the story might be interesting to business or
technology people?

I never knew humidity affected radio transmission speeds.

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sethammons
A buddy of mine used to work on radio internet stuffs. He said water does all
kinds of strange things to the signal and it's path. Transmitting over large
bodies of water and in full sports stadiums can be problematic

~~~
digi_owl
It depends on the frequency, higher frequencies gets affected more by water
and like.

Best one i have heard of was a wet dog acting as a very good wifi signal
blocker.

