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Letter To Senator Charles Schumer - Ban Goldman's SIGMA X Dark Pool
Dear Senator Schumer,
You recently approached SEC head Mary Schapiro with some very valid concerns about Flash trading, and the potential for investor abuse by advance looks to select market participants ahead of the general order pool. Your crusade was subsequently enjoined by such equity market luminaries as Robert Greifeld, president and CEO of the Nasdaq Stock Market, who had this to say regarding not just Flash trades in particular, but numerous other components of market topology, whose sole purpose is to obfuscate natural order flow and to provide loopholes for dominant market players to extract inefficiencies (i.e., scalp regular investors) arising from established and SEC-endorsed mechanisms of efficient market circumvention:
"Flash orders, which are a fundamental part of high-frequency trading, are but one symptom of the current evolving market structure. Nasdaq OMX is concerned that the securities industry appears
willing to accept more and more ‘darkness’ and limits on the
availability of order information. Instead, the policy goal should be
clear: to eliminate any order types or market structure policies that
do not contribute to public price formation and market transparency.”
"The industry has a unique opportunity at this time to take a hard look
at dark order types and the underlying market structure issues that do
not support public price information.”
Senator Schumer, while Zero Hedge applauds your initiative, the truth is that the wrongdoing in the context of potential investor market abuse runs far deeper and is much more pervasive than you realize. And while one can highlight the merits of the Op-Ed published in the New York Times earlier by quant titan Paul Wilmott entitled "Hurrying Into The Next Panic" (a recommended read for you and your staff), which notes numerous frightening implications brought about by the domination of Hiqh Frequency Trading, let us stick within the context of advance looks, which is at the basis of your letter seeking the ban of Flash-like behavior.
Zero Hedge would like to highlight that while your letter to Mary Schapiro indicated your concern with such market actors as DirectEdge, BATS and Nasdaq, the truth is there are substantially larger and more dangerous "fish" on which you should focus your attention.
As a primary example, I would like to refer you to Goldman Sachs' dark pool, SIGMA X.
As evidence I present an analytical paper prepared by none other than Goldman Sachs, compliments of the Bank Holdings Company's GSET (Goldman Sachs Electronic Trading) division.
While I recommend you read the full report and other related literature (especially if you wish to understand why VWAP or Volume-Weighted Average Price is such a critical concept in modern trading), I would like to bring your attention to page 6 of this report, and in particular the following sections:
"The child orders generated by Goldman Sachs algorithms interact with SIGMA X liquidity."
...and...
"When a client routes a marketable order through SIGMA, the smart router first exposes the order to SIGMA X liquidity."
This basically means that as a Goldman algo strategy splits an incoming block trade into smaller (child) components, these orders will first be advance-exposed to Goldman's own prop strategies which get a "first look" (no pun intended) at the order flow to dispose of as they desire. Additionally, due to the flashing advance window, Goldman implicitly knows in advance of a potential spike in order flow - in other words if there is a size buyer or seller of any given particular stock - an incalculable edge in today's market, allowing one to potentially take advantage (frontrun) of forced buyins and unwinds and major block trades.
This provides the firm with a material advantage over other market participants.
In order to get a sense of the size of this potential abuse, as Goldman itself discloses, SIGMA X traded over 123 million (matched-only, single counted) shares daily in May, over 600 million per week. This is a staggering amount of shares over a cumulative extended period of time, and could potentially provide the firm with a substantial unfair advantage over other participants.
Furthermore, Goldman is a dominant Program Trading market player on the New York Stock Exchange, by virtue of its participation in the NYSE's Supplemental Liquidity Provider program. As publicly disclosed, Goldman traded over 796 million principal shares (for its own benefit, not as an agent) in the prior week alone, almost double the next largest market participant Credit Suisse which traded a total volume of just over 420 million shares.
Whether or not Goldman can implicitly take advantage of the advance looks Goldman receives compliments of its own dark pool, SIGMA X, and then subsequently reroutes this informational advantage to trades executed on the NYSE, and other exchanges and ECNs, is also a very pertinent question.
However, even if acting in a vaccum exclusively within the confines of SIGMA X, Goldman's modus operandi begs the question: if, as your letter discloses, you believe Flash-like behavior is a detriment to investors, we encourage your team to focus its attention on this matter. The potential abuse in the context of SIGMA X, is substantial, and much more so if it is not confined to the dark pool exclusively.
In conclusion, SIGMA X was conceived and brought to market via Spear, Leeds and Kellogg: I would like to present to you the form contract with Goldman that new customers have to sign when they agree to engage SLK for any client purposes. I bring your attention to the highlighted area:
Zero Hedge is happy to answer any questions at your convenience. You may contact us at sigmax@zerohedge.com
PS. In case readers are having trouble grabbing the original document, here is the link to the file saved internally.
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If Elliot gets on the FED..see the Macroeconomics Forum at ZH on Central Banks---> GlobalResearch piece...major league fur will fly.
Wondering why there is all this ruckus about how the 5-year went badly.
You gotta be kidding.
We are trilllions in the hole, and anytime we want to charge billions on our credit card, we can pull it off at less than 2% for 2-years and less than 3.75% for 5 years?
What if your girlfriend was a sales associate at Nordstrom's making $40k a year, and she had $250,000 in credit card debt. And she decides she wants a boob job costing $5,000. And she grumbles because the interest rate on her boob job loan goes from 3% to 4%?
I mean really, what if the 7-years go off at 5%? So what? Those are still 40-year low interest rates.
Bottom line is that the globe is still enamoured with our AAA-rated confetti, and at the first whiff of trouble, they will dump any and all "risky" investments and pile into U.S. Debt.
And those Chinese....
You would think they would be offloading a little here, a little there. Nope. Our debt is still "gilt-edged" to them.
Until the 10-year yield gets north of 8%, there is not going to be any funding problems for the U.S.
Interesting thoughts on rates. If you look at the ten-year historic rates, 4.5% seems about average for the period before the crisis. I have been thinging that 4% is a kind of "watch me keep rates under 4%" for Bernanke, as his way of adding to the evidence that deflation is the worry and not inflation / debasement.
The bitching will rise IMO if we get to 4.5%, as the markets I think will perceive this as Bernanke's having lost control of the long end, i.e.: rates back to pre-crisis levels, and crisis measures still needed to keep the system going.
What do you base your 8% on?
The wiley Chinese are setting up bilateral credit swaps all across the earf. See Brazil, Russia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, etc.
Robot Trader: You are spot on in so many ways. Take for instance the Hot Mess I met at the Nordstrom MAC makeup counter recently. This perfectly painted 19yr old blond was named CJ but didnot know of her namesake on Baywatch CJ Parker, better known as Pamela. But I digress.
The Fed can keep pillaging Treasury Auctions with monetized debt to keep rates under control. How does this all unwind? All kinds of debt end up on the Fed balance sheet. 1.25Trillion MBS, GM,CITI, credit cards, student loans, auto loans, soon CommercialMBS....etc. Inflation and money velocity are both stymied when the Fed creates money to backstop debt. These debts could sit forever, rolling over year after year. We don't need the Chinese at all. Just monetize bad debts on Fed balance sheet.
My state school Econ minor sees no end to the game. Do you? What even drives/raises rates to 8%? A Fed organized defense of the dollar at 78.3 and all is well.
Back to Nordies to check on CJ:)
Did anyone else catch this today during the CFTC Hearing on Energy Position Limits and Hedge Exemptions? CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler asked about co-location of servers to JPM and GS reps who were on the panel, Blythe Masters of JPM and Don Casturo of GS. Gensler said that it had been in the press a lot yesterday --- and the question was asked by Commissioner Michael Dunn yesterday to panelists. Here is the link to today’s panel and co-location question can be found at approximately 2:06:42. Blythe Masters said she did not even know that it occurred while Don Casturo had “no comment.”
http://www.capitolconnection.gmu.edu/cftc/072909/wmarchive.htm
Sorry I did not listen to yesterday’s testimony yet, but here is the link to find the exact question as posed by Commissioner Dunn.
http://www.capitolconnection.gmu.edu/cftc/072809/wmarchive.htm
great link, thanky!
nice find
You did it and it is just too big to ignore! Thank you for all of us!
It is interesting how both the chairmen of CME and ICE both warned against the risk of futures trades being forced into the "dark , unregulated world of off-exchange trading. " If "dark and unregulated off-exchange trading "is problematic for the futures industry, why has it been forced upon the equities markets ?
I cleared with SLK years ago at the NYFE.
Then we called this "trading in the booth" which meant the customer"s order never made it to the pit.
Tyler, isn't Schumer the guy who's oft-referred to as a "socialist"?
Perhaps a retraction or two . . . scratch that (just kidding), a nice, pro-collective-good perspective piece wouldn't hurt about now.
Just thinking.
No, he was known as "the steamroller"
I think the conspiracy folks are starting to make some sense, considering the seasonal Flu has a mortality rate in the US of +- 37,000/yr and to date maybe 84 people in the US have succumbed to A-H1N1 (swine flu):
Military planning for possible H1N1 outbreak
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/07/28/military.swine.flu/
When PandemicFlu was all the buzz 3 or 4 years ago with the super lethal AvianFlu (H5N1), this military stuff was not part of the drill -
Now you're thinking. This is a huge issue and one that keeps me up at night. Regional military planning?, looks like Swine Flu is a cover for the bank holiday that is planned in the Fall as we are collapsing economically. A state of marshall law could be declared at any point, provided there was a believable excuse.
History is filled with conspiracies, every war, empire expansion, and empire collapse started with a plan. "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The people that talk about tin foil hats or conspiracy "theorists" are in denial, part of the conspirators, or woefully ignorant. Only those in on the plan know every detail, and it's not like they publish their plans - therefore any conspiracy theorist is merely someone looking from the outside in and connecting the dots.
http://birdflu666.wordpress.com
Bravo! I is wearing your hat in Toronto right now.
Also I think Spitzer can be trusted cuz he admits he likes whores. The other folks are lying criminals. Spitzer just likes whores. Big fuggin deal. So did Jeebus.
Sigma X and AES are responsible for > 60% of dark pool crosses because they are great places to do business....no i don't work for Goldman and believe "flash orders"( those flashed for milliseconds at various spreads from the NBBO and used by the likes of vast HF's on long island to profile liquidity and trade ahead) should be banned.
GS offers a broker neutral routing choice through REDI that allows clients of GS to avoid trading with Goldman in any capacity if they so choose.
If you choose to route to GS and have not opted out then you will trade with all participants including GS who route to and through Sigma.
Goldman is likely profiled customers and either chooses to add liquidity and take the other side of a trade or not. As long as this profiling only adds liquidity on the opposite side of the market to the client and does not have the ability to front run or go the same way as the customer order then this practice is called "market making" and is wholly reasonable and LEGITIMATE and is clearly stated in the customer agreement...(probably not clear enough for those who own 0% down, 0% apr 5 year teaser mortgages which judging by the comments above are > 1/2 of you angry old men). If the program is taking liquidity and running ahead of a customer limit then this is clearly ILLEGITIMATE...there is nothing here to suggest such abuse.
It is clear that there are LEGITIMATE and ILLEGITIMATE practices at work across all electronic markets right now that could easily be investigated and rectified.
Agree that market fragmentation and the "various dark pool" models need some work but Joe Public on average is getting "very good" if not "best execution".
Dewd, who are you kidding? Goldman's "clients" work at some pension fund or whatever, they get taken with their Goldman rep to a steak dinner and box seats at a yankees game and they don't know a sigma from a photon.
Very good post, and might I add that dark pool volume is only about 5% of daily volume figures.
the latest from Pettis:
Squeezing out the exporters
http://mpettis.com/2009/07/squeezing-out-the-exporters/
"I am working on a fairly long entry that I will post this weekend about why a trade rebalancing and a consumption/savings rebalancing will take place in both China and the US whether or not we want it. ..."
July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese manufacturers increased production for a fourth month in June, capping the fastest quarterly output expansion in more than half a century and helping the economy rebound from its deepest postwar recession.
Production rose 2.4 percent from May, the Trade Ministry said today in Tokyo. Output gained 8.3 percent last quarter from the first three months of 2009, the most since 1953, and companies surveyed planned increases in July and August as well.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=aRYMFrCEOMCo&refer=e...
yes, but it clearly states that the rise is because all the stimulus packages that were passed, not because demand picked up ... so its only temporarily ... basic line is ... more fucking green shoots based on some weird sense of reality ...
" Leaner inventories and more than $2 trillion in spending by governments worldwide stabilized global demand, supporting exporters including Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Even with the month-on-month gains, companies are churning out 23.4 percent fewer goods than last year, putting pressure on them to forgo investment and cut workers to maintain profits. "
.....
" Some 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) in spending by China’s government has buoyed sales of Japanese cars, building equipment and steel. PresidentBarack Obama’s “cash-for- clunkers” program is also helping prop up the U.S. auto market, while Japan’s own stimulus measures have boosted purchases of environment-friendly cars like Toyota Motor Corp.’s Prius."
...
“The recovery is only as robust as the stimulus packages,” said Barclays’ Morita."
i state my case
Apocalypse now-
I think you rest your case. Well done.
WHEN will we see the CLASS ACTION Lawsuits against the Goldman THEFT???
They will be HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE.
Congress waking up???
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124890898142691729.html
I use Goldmans's Redi Plus execution platform and noticed blatant front running of my orders. This occurs after the close and before the open. I do not know if this is GS doing this but the speed this occurs arose suspicion. This is an example of what happens: Stock ABCD has no market after hours. I enter a bid to buy ABCD at $40.00 per share and there is all of a sudden and instantly an order to buy ABCD at $40.01 in front of my order. If I update my order to buy $40.02 the front runner instantly (less than a second) is now bidding $40.03. This program is set to get in front of your order up to the closing price of ABCD stock. However, I have found a wonderful use for these programs because, for example if ever need a fill, I can actually provoke the program, by continuing to get in front of him until he is bid up to the previous close where I can then whack his bid and get my fill. Again, I'm not sure this is a GS program. I have a friend that clears through another large broker that is not GS and he gets the front runner program with his platform too. Also the orders are being sent to Arca and Inet.
this is likely another participant in sigma who is also a goldman client...u can't front run customers in such a blatant fashion else rules aside you will run out of customers.
I don't know if I would call that front running as much as it is price improvement. Glad to see that you gamed the computer. It could be GS, but anybody, anywhere with a computer and even the tiniest bit of computing skills could program something that behaves that way.
What happens if you cancel your bid? Does the bid in front of you disappear/move lower/stay the same?
Happened to me as well, very fishy. This problem is compounded when on 15 minute delayed quotes - a gray area. I think the example is actually part of the bid-rigging program that sends multiple bids out that are canceled within sub-seconds to find out your highest price.
This is how misinformed this debate has gotten. That's not front-running. That's called improving the bid.
Let's say you want to buy a house. The seller wants to sell for $400,000. You think you can do a little bit better, so you tell them you'll play $350,000. Then someone else makes the seller an offer to buy for $360,000. Are you trying to tell me that you can't submit a bit for $370,000? Or tell the broker you changed your mind and will pay $400,000?
That's not front-running. That's a negotation involving multiple parties -- an auction. Like you see on TV in the movies. "6 bid, 6 bid, 6 bid, do I hear 7?" The stock market is a double auction.
If you publically submit a buy order to a marketplace, people are allowed to pay a higher price. Front-running is when someone with a fiduciary duty to you (some such as your broker trying to fill your on agency basis) intentionally steps in front of your order because they have non-public information. The computer who topped your $40.00 bid is no more guilty of front-running than when you topped its $40.01 bid.
The irony of this debate is that these flash/bolt/elp orders served a useful and legitimate purpose in the market. Many stocks in the market are very tightly bid and offered. The market might be a penny wide all day, maybe $10.00 bid at $10.01 offered. There might be 50,000 or 100,000 shares on more on the bid and the offer.
So if you put in an order to buy on bid, you might have to wait quite a while to get filled. This is what has driven a lot of volume to the dark pools. The SEC prohibits sub-penny pricing, but the wide range of fee agreements possible through running a dark pool (where you can charge your investors completely different fees, unlike a public market which publishes them) effectively allows dark pools to price sub-penny. This also facilitates a lot of payment-for-order flow (Madoff) arrangements.
If you're a retail investor, and you join the $10.00 bid for 100 shares after there's already 100,000 shares in front of you, likely the only way you get filled is if the market drops to $9.99 bid at $10.00 offered. And if the market is semi-random, and goes the other way ($10.01 bid at $10.02 offered), then the $10.01 bid could get filled in really quick by smart computer programs. Quicker than your eye can see and your finger can quick with a mouse. Repeat a couple times and the market could easily be $10.03 and $10.04
So it makes a lot of sense to just buy the $10.01's right away. But if there's a lot of size offered, why not get the best fee you can? If send your order to NYSE, ARCA, NASDAQ, or BATS, then you get charged anywhere from $0.0018 to $0.0030 per share. If you fill the Direct Edge ELP, you $0.0010 per share. If you send a flash order to NASDAQ BX, you execute for free. So it's clear these are legitimate tools for price improvement.
Yes, if you flash 500,000 shares, someone might jump in front of you. On the other hand, if you flash 100 or 1,000 shares, and there are 50,000 shares on the offer, no one is going to be 50,000 shares to possibly make a penny on 100.
Yes, flash are somewhat artificial, but there isn't any other way to do it given the SEC's ban on sub-penny pricing. Furthermore, they are completely voluntarily. You can send a non-flash order, it's the default. NASDAQ, BATS, DirectEdge completely disclose to the market place that this is being done. Anyone who is connected to NASDAQ or BATS can respond to them, and on DirectEdge anyone who is on the ELP program can see them (and they don't try to discriminate in terms of access). BATS and DirectEdge give away their market data, and NASDAQ only charges modest administrative fees.
So the opposite intention is getting effect here. The public exchanges come out with an equal access way to compete with dark pools. But it seems it will get banned. And this will just drive more volume away from public markets and to the dark pools, where pricing can be completely discriminatory. NASDAQ, one of the main proponents of this, doesn't even have the guts to stand up and defend the public markets, because their biggest customers run dark-pools (see Getco, etc). So they are just happy with being on equal footing with DirectEdge.
The end result of all this nonsense is that the regulations regarding dark pools (if any) will have loopholes, and the public markets will be worse off.
If you want to debate high frequency trading, debate high frequency trading. But flash orders are a valuable tool to the market.
This is the same poster. Anyone who reads this and has the ability to see the book for all venues and the size associated.
Take a look at the books for BAC and XLF tomorrow and post if you disagree that the public markets would be more efficient (and investors would get better prices) if they had a means for engaging in sub-penny trading for these stocks. (Which is possible if you have flash type orders)
thanks for this!
Thanks for your post. I appreciate your input. +1
A long winded post doesn't support any of your claims. There are no negotiations in an electronic market. There is no auction. The markets are posted, or in many cases flickering and that's it. 10.00 to 10.01. Take the offer or hit the bid.
What any institution is concerned about is not just the price but the price including execution fees. That's why if you execute send a market order through TD Ameritrade, they don't send it to the public market. They send it to either Citadel or Knight
http://www.tdameritrade.com/forms/CLR2054.pdf
Knight or Citadel pay them 0.001 or 0.002 per share, so that turns into 10.008 or 10.009 (of course, they don't directly pass this onto the customer. get the game here?). Go to the public market you're paying 0.003 to remove on NASDAQ, so that turns into 11.003
(See fees to remove liquidity)
http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=PriceListTrading2#rebates
That's why Ameritrade doesn't send ANY market orders to the public market. They're basically just using NASDAQ, etc. when they need to post liquidity, trade in the opening / closing cross, etc.
Flash/Bolt/ELP is a way to compete with this.
"$0.0015 rebate per share for routable shares displayed and then executed on BATS through the BOLT display
process" http://www.batstrading.com/resources/regulation/rule_book/BATS_Ex_Fee_Sc...
That turns the $11.01 purchase into a $11.0085 price before fees. That's price improvement. Hmm wait 30 milliseconds to see if you can get a better price if there are a lot of sellers out there. Sounds like an auction to me.
Unless you want volume to disappear from public exchanges, you have to give them a way to compete with the arrangements offered by Citadel, Knight etc. Think about it this way. RegNMS doesn't allow the public quotes to be $11.01 bid at $11.01 offered, even if the prices are different after execution fees. Yet, if TD "pings" Citadel, while Citadel has that order, they are seeing the market as $11.01 bid (from the ping) at $11.01 offered (on the public markets). And they are under no obligation to fill the ping. They don't have the risk of having a firm quote out there. They can pass on it. They get to see a better market than anyone else.
As further evidence of how uninformed the commentary on this is issue, check out this link.
http://www.batstrading.com/resources/features/bats_exchange_dark_liq.pdf
BATS has one order type... bolt, they try to make completely transparent, and available to every member, and everyone is complaining about it. They have a separately order type, where access isn't fair (only Getco, Knight, Citi, and Liquidnet see it) that is open described on their website, and no one mentions it.
NYSE is one of the biggest critics of flash/bolt (again which I believe try to be open and transparent... BATS gives away market data that contains BOLTS order for free), etc. Yet NYSE Arca routes to 29 dark pools, seeing if anyone wants the order before route it to an exchange, and no one mentions it. They even get on CNBC and say they do nothing like flash, etc.
"NYSE Arca, for example, will pass an outbound routed order through a "cloud" of electronic indications from as many as 29 dark pools. The order executes against indications pooled in the cloud before being routed to protected quotes on other markets. Customers that execute against the cloud are guaranteed NBBO-or-better executions."
http://www.tradersmagazine.com/issues/20_289/102773-1.html
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-19743.pdf
Let's take a step back. " Yet, if TD "pings" Citadel, while Citadel has that order, they are seeing the market as $11.01 bid (from the ping) at $11.01 offered (on the public markets). And they are under no obligation to fill the ping. They don't have the risk of having a firm quote out there. They can pass on it. They get to see a better market than anyone else."
1 No obligation to fill
2 No risk of firm quote
As I said before, long post does nothing to support a weak argument.
Thank you for taking the time to write this! Very clear and informative. What is your view on computers placing a series of orders and immediately canceling them, in order to get information on the limits of other traders?
I suggest you send this later in paper form, the old fashioned way, sign with your real name and state clearly that you are one of his constituents.
If I cancel the order for ABCD, the front runner order sometimes disappears and sometimes stays for a short time, maybe 10 minutes.
The Fly in the Ointment.
Goldman is the equivalent of a card cheat and would have been legally shot in the old west.
Tyler, just wanted to suggest that you email this to (alot of) other members of congress, too.
Many of them would be happy to out-populist Shumer, I'm sure.
This was an open letter. By definition, it went to a LOT of people other than just Schumer.
BTW, Tyler, just had a friendly chat with a successful broker from Texas claiming EVERYBODY he knows in the industry read ZH. Keep up the good work.
As a long time investor I am in a fairly disadvantaged position, why not to ban short sales and day trading too.
It is too much manipulation from day traders and short sellers on the market.
I'm a technical analyst. If price is not a true equilibruim between buyers and sellers, then I'm out of business.
I think they have to make every order that goes into the market good for one second.
Original poster is confused. Forwarding GS marketing materials to a congressman is not a "paper." You are merely spamming Chuck Schumer with publicly available information. All brokers have internal liquidity pools. They all give algo and DMA traders the option to send child orders to their internal crossing / dark pools before going out to to the market, it has become part of the basic SORT setup. I actually really like the MLXN pool setup by Merrill, because it does indeed have a significant amount of retail flow, due to Merrill's business model.
Please try to be substantial and informed in your criticisms of different market structures. If I was a retail trader I would not write strategies that require the kind of infrastructure investments that professionals can afford. Institutions have problems that retail traders don't. It would be a relief not to have to worry about showing my size to the market and get my orders done at the open every day with a few clicks. I would run my models, pay the fucking spread, and go get some coffee.
They are gearing up for a huge INCREASE in HFT. NYSE's Fast-Trade Hub Rises Up in New Jersey
"Right now, the mammoth facility being constructed on the site of an old quarry is a largely empty shell with a jumble of high-tech gear. In about a year, the building is expected to house several football fields of cutting-edge computing equipment for hedge funds and other firms that engage in high-frequency trading, or the use of computers and complex algorithms to trade at lightning speed."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124890969888291807.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
I have nothing against trading excepting the recent HFT stuff being discussed here. I know that "legitimate" trading (probably has) a real benefit.
But what about investing for the long(er) term - is that truly dead?
Probably just rhetorical..
Pete
ZH hit it on the head again. Calling one's self a banker as a reason to declare full knowledge is as relevant as a business owner calling himself a businessman.
Very nice work. Dark pools are attempts at criminality. There is no other reason to remove transparency from markets.
Dark pools are marketed in a manner that appeals to traders' greed and fear. The pitch is that you "always get the mid-point" and thus realize the naive trader's belief that it is reasonable to expect to avoid paying transaction costs such as the bid/ask spread. I think you would agree that parasitic market structures like dark pools actually erode pricing efficiency, but I think they do tend to facilitate execution of large size with less follow-on volatility. They are not criminal in nature, or rather no more criminal than mainstream continuous double auction. They arguably do provide fewer structural impediments to conspiracy, but you must acknowledge that trading venues are competing viciously for order flow, and conspiracies that tend to hurt fill prices are self-defeating for the exchange on which they are perpetrated. Conspiracies that benefit the majority of traders, on the other hand, tend to be labelled as something else - we call it "an efficient market."
One belated thought about Schumer's motivation.
It's likely he's interested in the ban because the Chicago boys (cboe (and BATS and Direct Edge if they're not NY based) take the hit if the ban is introduced.
If the ban doesn't succeed, NYSE implements their flash and he calls it a draw.
It's a low risk strategy for him. If it fails, NYSE isn't hurt. If he wins NYSE wins, Chicago suffers.
He's been useful at drawing attention to the issue, but he's not your ally. Sigma X doesn't add value for him. Move on, I'm pretty sure he has.
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Traxion FG for firm ground surfaces ?Cushioned insole and heel collar ?Side lace with no tongue for increased striking area ?Power Spine internal chassis for stability and power ?Optifit for a snug fit and optimum ball contact.They also invented replaceable spike. We can part the soccer shoes and spikes. So players can replace their spikes optionally.
They tried and innovated on the designs of football boots. In 1929, AdiDassler invented the first soccer shoes. Appearance. In 1954, Adidas Corporation designed the first soft and lightweight soccer shoes. The shoes had nylon's spikes and they were revolutionary breakthrough. Then people followed this mode to design football boots. In 1958, most players participated in matches in Adidas's shoes. At the same time, Pele and Eusebio brought prosperity to Puma. Puma King in 1968 and Adidas Copa Mundial in 1979 were the most popular football shoes in the world.
The First Football Boots. The earliest soccer shoes were born in 1526 in the historical material. Certainly, at that time, nobody prepared football boots to play football. Why the first soccer shoes were known by all the people? The Chaussures de football shoes owner was a special man. He was the second king of Tudor dynasty, Henry VIII. He liked weapons, sports and hunting.
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