
The First High-Frequency Trader - ca98am79
https://medium.com/@SparkFin/what-high-frequency-trading-looked-like-in-the-1970-s-ed1674e704cd#.gdh0fuc17
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HiLo
I stopped at "Perhaps the best description of the rigged game HFT’s play comes
from the book..."

Just because they aren't guaranteeing your execution price when you trade in
larger size blocks doesn't mean the game is rigged. This has been discussed to
death. Sure, a few bad apples used the technology for frontrunning, but then
we have a frontrunning problem, not an HFT problem.

Furthermore, just like the stat arb strategies of the past that eventually
expanded beyond Wall St into everyday retail and online analytics, HFT
strategies may be hard to understand but it's not like this is some mafia
forcing you to pay a toll to trade... it's far, far more nuanced.

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ajbonkoski
This is so broken. The author describes front-running and then goes on to
conflate that with arbitrage. Those aren't the same thing! The only thing the
author gets right is that neither are a consequence of HFT, they can happen at
any trading-speed granularity. Further, there is absolutely nothing unfair
about arbitrage. Every-time you go to a store and think "I saw this cheaper at
a different store, I should buy it there instead", you're also doing a form
arbitrage. Arbitrage synchronizes prices. The arbiter earns the price spread
as a reward for moving the prices into alignment.

