That sort of smear may or may not be true, but it isn't what is happening in this case. What is happening in this case is that 2 groups (large liquidity purchasers and liquidity providers) have a natural antagonistic relationship with each other. Purchaser always want to lower the price and providers want to raise it. This is good for the markets operation.
But there is a PR/Power imbalance currently in the market. The large purchasers have tons of money had influence. They are using it to smear the sellers of the product they want. The sellers happen to be an easy group to smear (they are highly technical, secretive, and operate in a world that no one seems to understand).
If anything is immoral in all this is that they are actively trying to obfiscate what is happening in the markets and thereby spreading fear.
> The sellers happen to be an easy group to smear (they are highly technical, secretive, and operate in a world that no one seems to understand).
Once you understand what it is that they are doing, it's pretty clear that it's wrong.
Unfortunately, they like to muddy the issue. Hell, the OP does that every time it comes up on HN by asking people to explain what their problem with it is using obtuse industry jargon (e.g. "which part of FIX/OUCH enables front running?").
This is a really late reply, and probably futile in any case, but your comments on this subject make me think you don't actually understand "what it is that they are doing". When people try to explain it to you , you accuse them of using "obtuse industry jargon". Yet you've left them little choice.
An analogy (flawed as they all are) is if you came onto these forums and claimed that udp networks were evil and a tool whereby network consultants got rich on the back of "regular internet users". To back this up you pointed to some articles in People that claimed "Don't trust your UDP network, it might delete your traffic!" When anyone who actually understood networks said something like, "well it's nuanced, error checking is valuable in some cases and not valuable in others" you said, "DON'T MUDDY THE WATERS WITH YOUR JARGON!"
At this point, because networking is such a widely dispersed information set, and there aren't any high profile authors backing up your assertion that "UDP IS DANGEROUS IT LOSES PACKETS!" members of this forum would start down voting you into oblivion and making cogent arguments about why you are so very, very ignorant.
The only reason this hasn't happened yet is that knowledge of electronic trading systems is not as widely disseminated and every one with a 401k and a DSL modem thinks they know what electronic trading is about.
I will tell you this much, everyone who has ever actually traded electronically sees your comments and thinks of you as the "UDP is evil" guy. That we are in the minority means that we can't just laugh at and/or ignore you like we could if you were claiming nonsense about networks. For all I know you are a senator. So with that said, ask a straight forward question, I will answer it without any equivocations given that they aren't covered by IP agreements.
But there is a PR/Power imbalance currently in the market. The large purchasers have tons of money had influence. They are using it to smear the sellers of the product they want. The sellers happen to be an easy group to smear (they are highly technical, secretive, and operate in a world that no one seems to understand).
If anything is immoral in all this is that they are actively trying to obfiscate what is happening in the markets and thereby spreading fear.