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Meet The People Behind The Vacuum Tubes In The World's Largest HFT Shop
A rare glimpse inside "probably the world's biggest" 'market-maker' GETCO as it provides estimates of over 20% of 'liquidity' to the daly trading volume on US stocks. Meet the people that stand ready to feed the machines (oh wait) that stand ready at all times (except when most needed) to bid or ask...
The New York GES Trading Floor
The newly built trading floor that houses the GES Team is a few months old and just a five-minute walk from the New York Stock Exchange. A team of 19 to 25 traders and service providers work on this floor – depending on projects that require travel. The trading floor has several open positions for growth and sports a video conferencing system called Always On so that employees can see their counterparts in the GetCo London and Chicago offices.
Global Head of client services...
M.D. and Head of Sales... pavlovian bell-ringer?
"It’s a 30,000-foot view of the sales side. These guys watch other systems and look at order types. That means that they have a lot of alerts in their sights," he says. "If a call goes down, it rings a bell; if a customer is out, it rings a bell. If something crazy happens to a destination we route to it rings a bell." Once the bell rings, does this mean Drew and his team spring into action? It depends, he says. "The team is so small and that means that everyone lends a hand. If these two guys are certifying a trade with someone, the phone rings and we can jump on it," he says.
Senior Accounting Analyst.. part Borg "I live in Excel"?
But its not just stocks - here is the Fixed Income Sales Director
"Part of my job is not only being able to integrate with the end user from a technology perspective but also to be able to understand our flow and make sure it is respectable and customizable for the end user,"
Offense! The Coder...
Defense! Corporate Relations...
GETCO on the NYSE Trading Floor
With more than 850 listed companies in its roster, GETCO is the second largest Designated Market Maker (DMM) on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. There are 21 locations or stations inside the GETCO booth, where 21 DMMs monitor the stock prices of the companies represented by GETCO.
The DMMs hard at work...
and behind the scenes...
Source: Advanced Trading
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Destroying all confidence in the financial markets with the click of a mouse at a PC terminal.
Smoked in 0.000002 seconds.
Nice touch--faces of pleasant humans to make it all seem so normal.
Half of them actually do function.....believe it or not.
Good to put a face with the name.
Hmm..
So how effective and productive are these smiling units of the collective if you sever their link to the mother ship?
For the record... I'm the guy BEHIND the guy behind the vacuum tubes...
~~~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STjkQk7zedw
Careful, nature abhors a vacuum tube.
Check their necks for pods.
True story: I dreamed I was a pod person. (I have a sleep disorder; dreams can be special.) I wake up and for an ever so brief moment I find myself thinking, "I don't have to go to work cause I am a pod person." Related: My wife, while sleeping, opens her eyes the other night and says, "I wasn't talking in my sleep until I opened my mouth" and then closed her eyes. Message: Stop fluoridation of the water!
.
They have bright futures as lamp post adornments.
they didn't build that
Your Account Will Be Assimilated...
Crap.....it's Jon!
I didn't see anyone move - could be wax dummies.
so... they must keep the pleasure models in the Utilitity vRooom--with all those smiley faces http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154416/pleasure-model
Fixed income sales director...i'd like to integrate her end...
I'd much prefer the naughty Senior Accounting Anal-yst
I'd be careful about that anal yeast, if I were you, man.
Its all engineered to take peoples money. Which is fine. Except the big loosers cry to their congressman to get bailed out we end up paying.
"That HFT Terminal is out there. It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are broke."
Excellent quote grab...
I'll be back.
High-Frequency Trade Drones
True.
I got a kick out of the pictures and Tyler's captions, especially "Offense" and "Defense"...GENIUS !
OT: ZH: please cover the drop of several PIMCO closed end funds to their NAV. They got and will be getting "TVIXed" quite massively.
i got a call from a trading firm to buy "Carbon Credit" and its trading on some Commodity Trading Exchange!
reminds me of John Paulson GS ABX!
FUCK HFT! FUCK THE BORGS!
Resistance is futile!
I see fat people, they must be poor.
If you po......they'll give you food stamps.
Don't forget the OBAMAFON
I'm hooked up.....give me a call.
obama to obamafonidiots: call me in nov, maybe.
They have killed their own market, by stealing from people volumes have become anemic, pretty sure people will want to trade none bs markets in future.
Can we get this crash overwith already so I can go bang my wife?
So your wife is free right now?
gotta go...
Know when to walk away.....and know when to run.
Hey I was here first!
who bangs their wife?...that's gross
Someday we will see an article about the guy who wrote the program that then created the algo...
Oh wait...
Didn't you mean: Someday we will see an article about the algo who wrote the program that created the guy?
And precisely what product of real value to society are these schmucks providing again? Well, I can see that at least two of them will easily find work in the red light district when the system consumes itself. Don't be hate the players sheeple, get off your ass and change the game.
at least one of them will be working the brown paper bag district
One anyway ...
4 HFT zombies downvoted this.
Not yet.....not sure what the problem is....
LIQUIDITY of course!!! Like a boxer who can punch 10x a second taking on a boxer who can punch 1x a second. The faster boxer is just providing 10x liquidity, never letting you get a shot in while he pummels your face. the flaw in this is that a box probably earned the right to punch 10x by training, but HFT is just plain structured stealing.
How hard would it be to put in latency/trading speed curbs? Kind of like Nascar trying to keep all the car specs equal so they race on somewhat even terms.
Asimov's three laws of robotics totally ignored.
Gotta love the asshole with the polo shirt!!!! What a heart warming train of photos...Doing GOD'S work....
"It was shattered [the cpu]... didn't work. But it gave us ideas, It took us in new directions... things we would never have thought of. All this work is based on it."
Lindsey Williams latest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nW4cDd_A8-Q
from the video summary:
Get all your Youngevity Products such as Beyond Tangy Tangerine, the Alex Pack and Pollen Burst. These supplements are a great way to get your essentials vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other beneficial nutrients!
maybe i'm bit too critical, but the Alex Pack doesn't look like it's working too well on Alex.
snark aside, it's actually a good interview if you can stomach AJ constantly tootin his own horn. thanks for sharing.
the FED buying all the mortgages makes a lot of sense actually. figure they already technically "own" all the US gold (via gold certificates), so might as well buy all the land (via MBS) as well. who would thunk that paper does really smother rock?
nice display of tapir-nosed individuals.
Disclosure: long rhinoplasty surgeons.
*
Just these Jews ... just these Jews.
Rhinoplasty? Looks as if M.D. and Head of Sales has already gone there ...
the profile shot of them at their trade stations looks like it could be a Tel Aviv internet cafe.
Funny. I did triple years at Bear Stearns. Our starting lineup was bigger than the Packers Offensive Line. Our pool party looked like a bunch of Walruses broke down the gate and made their way to the pool. When we lit farts (c'mon traders, you know), we had to be careful we didn't burn paint off the walls. Company shirts in two sizes, XXL $ XXXL.
I partied (sort of) with a trader from Bear Stearns. Towering type of guy who touches you a lot when he's drunk with the pointy parts of his hands, and only laughs when he has food in his mouth. I didn't know he was part of a pattern.
and we put the hottie there. as if we needed another reminder of more sources of capital destruction..which one is worse. HFTs or poonie?
The Fixed Income trader is a yid 100%
A cup of coffee and a roll of TP. Classy.
she's got the drips from all that coke
noticed that too...they eat an drink where they shit
poonie wins hands down and Spanish poonie is the most dangerous of all the poonies, that said I have also witnessed the Ukranian and Phillipine poonie reek great damage upon man.
Can i have a fill on 3,000,0000,000,000 AAPL shares at 612.0032, and a sell order at 612.0033
thnx GETCO, ur the best
does GETCO stand for something like GEICO that starts with "Government Employee......"
"GETCO" as in "Get Corp" as in Get other peoples money and shield liability behind a corporation.
No "people of color" on the GETCO staff? Quick, notify Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.
Reminding us that there is zero productive/constructive merit in financial witchcraft.
Notice that the human borg need good lumbar support.
A fatal weakness if you ask me.
"....a video conferencing system called Always On so that employees can see their counterparts in the GetCo London and Chicago offices"
Forgot to mention that it doesn't record so you can't get caught in those pesky email and im archives like Lieborgate, et al.
So far, so far. Looks like a room full of winners. Unlike some rooms we know...
Is winner synonymous with wanker?
Drew,
The bells ringing. One of your masters wants a coffee and needs someone to polish his knob.
Look at all the HFT scum assholes disgusted as normal people........
They do look like normal people. I keep wondering how Janet Napolitano keeps getting away with it.
These people don't even rate having a cube? Better for morale I guess.
Now they just need the Blue Fairy to come along and turn them into real people...
Developer has ubuntu 10.10 installed,
the second guy in in the second picture doesn't type very well or hes got a slow machine because everyone's box is on and it's stuck at the Windows 7 Log in.
They are using Open Office, all the spreadsheets open in pictures have nothing in them
The Senior Analyst is technoogically retarded and is the only one using Microsoft query maker...as a Senior...really.
Fixed income sales director need to run her updates...so there is no central software security management or patch management of any kind. Good.
Thanks Tylers! Understand these people make money but don't really spend any of it on their infrastructure except with their fuck around toy. That's one of the dumbest places to be. All drivers and no car.
What kind of display are you using? I can't see shit on those screens.
Use tinypic and google images to find source, reverse look up...as I mentioned they don't have any offense or defense where it counts. Besides use your eyes. Hand full of pictures and about a minute of time is all it takes for an Old, experienced Engineering IT Merc to find eight holes in the perimeter and IT security. These people, again, have money...LOTS of money. Yet they are modeled like A FUCKING START UP DOTCOM OPERATION.
Maybe they would like to buy some experience and some weapons and real defensive measures to actually defend their tiny financial island?
That's where your money is people. In their hands.
Ralph, CPL is the local ZH hacker/Anon code genius. He can "see".
Quick, put some masking tape on your webcam!
ori
I haven't don't that in forever and it was to show the G+ community how insecure it was with their permission. It was fun though.
Just had an interesting thought CPL...
Visualize the same trading floor from 30 years back and now. Then it was all waving arms and jostling bodies and scraps of paper everywhere.
Look now, all clean and calm.
Machines, in their evolution swallowed the outer chaos in their core(s). Then they ramped it up, as their processing power increased. To a degree flailing arms and the whole human drama could nevver have done.
So calm. Just like the inside of a RR, which has, under layer upon layer of "dampers", 8 or 12 cylinders exploding, gears gnashing, pumps.....noise....
Inside...... "The only thing you can hear is the clock on the dash".
We are trapped inside the machine, even though it looks other-wise.
Time for the Butlerian Jihad...
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/time-faster-now/
ori
I gathered that he was l33t hax0r from his posts. Impressive. I gotta get back in the game but I started with FORTRAN 77 on RSX-11M.
Computer languages are cash and carry, I have about twenty under my belt. Find one that you can pick up quickly, then figure out how you can get it to talk to a piece of hardware. You've got Fortran 77 so you're already familiar with the brutal annoyances of inbuilt limitations. I would play with Perl and Ruby on Rails. Both are designed to be absorbed quickly and it's API is a veritable swiss army knife of tools to hammer out something quick.
CPU speed's today are so fast and the API's available are nearly infintely tweaked for speed and buglessness, hard to fault something that has the true hive mind working on it. If something doesn't work, the debuggers actually tell you how to write better code to make it work faster. Both languages are suitably lawless to make nearly anything you can think of and talk to any device on the planet if it's got a vendor reference.
http://www.pcidatabase.com/
It's not sexy, but it's how you get machines to talk to a CPU. Toaster, Tank, Car or even the LHC in switzerland. All have a piece of themselves in here somewhere that makes things "go".
I've been doing this since 1976 and am semi-retired. Just a luser now. MUMPS was my least favorite to work with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS
Then you'll love Ruby on Rails using Perl to manage Data. MUMPS...lol! It's still being used in US and Canadian facilities. I don't miss any of them. Actually if you have Cobol all government collection agencies would love your input. The dot.com patch ran out on them last year and returns for dead people are over due now....long over due, like 1910 type of problem. Savvy brother? Yeah, we fixed Y2K for them with a 13 year patch promise, well a decade later, no migration was done where it counted because dot/com blew up.
Dumb fucks continued to build internal tools hanging off a tax DB that isn't useful. So if you want to bill for 2k a day. Just scan the IT head shops in the tristate area and Ottawa/Maniwaki. So as an added benefit to the current mess of retarded politicos making tax plans.
Well most of the people are dead. Look at how many people filed last year versus those actually working. Nearly a 20% deviation, because the total working population was around 20% in size in relation to the current population.
The taxes collected are as phony as a three dollar bill because nobody knows how to manage the collosal Cobal systems and their DB2/Oracle shit tier databases run by civil servants. Not to fault the poor bastards taking care of these things. It's just the technology is 20 years old. To find a master of them would require a shovel and a graveyard, because most of those I knew that did it are dead or eating paste in a nursing home somewhere.
Like russia, reliance on tech that is "magic" to 99% of the population is how we collapse. People fail to remember the tools and how they are built. Anything else offered is pure Science fiction.
As a IT Statesman Ralph, you could make some decent bank working for what is like breathing air to you.
One of the few friends near my age managing to get work full time is a COBOL guy who is really good at JCL. I did Y2K work in COBOL but it is something in my toolbox like MUMPS but not really my thing. I've done stints at the pre-merger Chase and also CitiBank, maintaining the creaky OS/2 systems used for check scanning and figuring out where they screwed up assigning the same load balancing number on a mixed Token Ring/Ethernet topology. Banks were not IT friendly places back then but I doubt it changed much in an environment where every other person is a Vice President.
I enjoy reading your posts because you still have enthusiasm and have stayed current. If I was working with someone like you it would really get me fired up once again. Keep up the good work!
The Open Office comment is because they don't have the BIG GAY MICROSOFT ribbon toolbar. Unless they have Office 2003 installed, unlikely in a newer private sector that use the PC license that comes from Dell.
I know they have dells, Because all of their monitors in the pictures are the 24 inch Dells sold last year that came with their crappy blade thin client implimentations and the mid tier business desktops.
I've been doing this 25 years, three projects a year for 15 years, that company has no IT direction. It's clownshoes.
So how can we take advantage of that?
You know one thing.
They are using Oracle 9 or better. There is no ODBC connector for Open Office for earlier versions of Oracle. And trying to get Open Office to behave with MS SQL is nearly impossible with the microsoft patch cycle. It is easier getting tooth paste back into the tube instead of chasing a configuration management problem that is built to be systemic and continuously problematic (money/time sink hole)
For tearing the ass out of the HFT brain on their Oracle back end...If they bought the Dell COTs thin client package with the "security" (giggle) professional services (chortle). There is a common thread in all the products you get from Dell, that POS "system management product" Open Manager...if you've got HP don't be thinking you are all that and a bag of chips either. You inherited the worst of slackware, built by co-op students...and worse yet, the crappiest of SNMP hacking that touch all system with HP SIM and HP RDP. I couldn't think of a bigger hole that was so badly represented and poorly packaged.
People pay peanuts, expect the only thing that happens is you get elephants hiding on site.
People buy all this crap as appliances built by the lowest bidder and the cheapest there fore dumbest of the labour pool. This HFT office has shown me it's open for business.
IT security is always a present danger situation. Always. Turn off your firewall and virus checker and go connect anywhere. It would take maybe 20 seconds to catch something. The reason for that. The Greedy vicious type of asshole, even when they are caught their systems are usually still running or co-oped while they are in jail. Nightmare trying to clean it up. There's just so much of it and some of it is self replicating now. :(
You had me at chortle. . .
All that and we have their names too. Hmmmmmm.
I know. When the fat man opens the kimono we stare in open faced shock, not because there is something we need.
Again clown shoes IT management get that and they are running other people's money.
First initial, last name @ getco llc dot com.
I would even bet that their AD looks like it did when they ran the setup wizrad with some minor embellishments to make it slightly different. Since I only seen a developer in the pcitures I bet any money he didn't harden the AD schema and nor did the appropriate security applications to it. You can tell from looking at him he's been there for over a year and he gets Sunday off, look at the set of luggage under his eyes.
Otherwise
Which continues to tell me their backup and recovery procedures are useless. If that office burned down, humpty dumpty would never be able to put it together again. Closest they probably have to central management is the fact they are all tied into dumb terminals...except the developer....hope all that source is actually backed up. Billions of dollars depend on it kids. Means the company owner is cheap and retarded. The developer is chief cook and bottle washer at his IT disco.
Poor bastard. Well, he is the only one there that won't end up on the breadlines. All those traders working there are all feeding the HFT. They get squeezed like an Orange from process, tactical, decision making, everything...after they are done, throw away the trader because you've made a mini version of them by distilling them from what they do in their consoles.
That's why people give me lots of money. I push the clients out of the way, glue the most technical person there to me and excuse them from work for two months, fix it, build it, document it, hand it over and then leave to the next headache and stroke waiting to happen. If they don't listen, I charge them anyways and go to the next client then spread the word of a problem client to black ball them. My shitty client, doesn't have to be someone else's shitty problem that won't listen.
It's pays well to keep people safe and it's fun to play with expensive toys all day. Sort of like being a professional race car driver, people shove the key's of something fun and fast in your hand, then you teach them how not to kill themselves driving.
A place like that, you'd never get your money out of them. Too stupid, cheap and greedy. Again all "drivers" and no car.
Speaking of Oracle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjwY6O2zE0E
The masters of the use of lawyers and licensee threats...
Excellent CPR ... great eye!
I only caught that the PR guy has a keyboard with hotkeys. Although I guess you can boilerplate bullshit.
Of course. Same people are the retards that buy keyboards for their iPads and Android devices instead of doing the most sensible thing on them
Train the voice recognition on them that's been available, built into the systems themselves and stop typing altogether. Takes two hours to save probably months of time typing....just like I am doing now.
People really aren't that interested in using technology properly. They are dogmatic and predictable. I can make you a promise. Any and every government agency with more than a 1000 bodies, there will be an area that resembles Jurassic park.
Oh yeah and my favorite.
Those people keep business and governments moving, mainly because they are workhorses and they are all slightly insane, only way anyone is touching their PC is with a lawyer present at their funeral.
I think the whole office is a dummy storefront,
PR.
Not going to let us see the real thing, now are they ?
Be like the telephone sex operators,old hags that could drop the WTC just by looking at it.
like pushing Webistics on the Sopranos
I don't know about them specifically but usually the real thing in an "electronic trading floor" is really unexciting: just a bunch of half empty racks with lights blinking in a darkish room.
drone bait
Trader with the most monitors wins.
Eminence Front
No room for affirmative action hires.
"Fixed Income"
They fix it so your money is theirs.
What do yea think? The HFT whores swallow too! Believe it or not, these slimebags actually think there respectable.
Carbon unit..........what is your function?
WTF is the toilet paper for ?????.........nasty fuckers......that place must stink like shit !
Forget fat fingers. A coffee spill on one of those keyboards can cause a flash crash.
I don't think these people would pass the Turing test.
both chicks have the caption above saying. im gonna get your money with either one of my vacuum tubes.
What a shock! I did not expect to see any people at all...................
Where's Slim Pickens when we need a number 6?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EM-lxsxeXBI#t=19s
CPL,
Thanks for your comments. You may be an smart and sharp sysadmin, but your arrogance will take you nowhere. Maybe you envy those guys? Your comments may sound well for somebody that does not know about IT a lot, but to me, you are just trying to show up.
Being a sysadmin is very different from being a quant analyst, or quant developer. But you go saying that you can pick up any language, and learn it, and you recommend people using Ruby-on-Rails or Perl. If you are so smart, you should know that every language is very good at something, and not so good for other things. Ruby-on-Rails is not even a programming language, but a web framework.
Would you try to implement a quant algo in Perl or Ruby-on-Rails? Good luck! Have you ever seen any big system application in Perl?
Now, I will challenge you. Read a couple of C++ books (the language that use most HFT shops), and try to write efficient and safe code. I guarantee you that you won't be able to do it.
1. You say that they are idiots for using OpenOffice. What's wrong with OpenOffice? It does not have the ribbon that you love? OpenOffice is as productive as Word, with one big advantage, it works with Macs, Windows and Linux. What if not everybody there uses Windows? Have you considered this?
2. Regarding security, you do not know what infrastructure they have. What if they prefer a centralized UMT instead of a number of antiviruses and firewalls? What if they prohibit hooking up USB devices? You don't know, but you can "conclude" that their security is useless.
3. The developer is using Ubuntu. What's wrong with that? Do you really thing that he runs the production algos in his workstation? As long as the code that he develops is stable and fast, who cares what he uses. Then, you go saying that their backup and security procedure sucks because his APC may not work. Who cares if his workstation goes down? Every company has a code repository, which is backed up. Do you know if they have this?
4. Regarding the databases, I am not a fan of Oracle or MS SQL. It looks like you would like them to run MS SQL, right? Now, what if they don't model the algos in an spreadsheet? What if they use R or Matlab? Even more, if you are so smart, you should know that they are probably better off running something like KDB, right?
Well, as I said, try to control your ego. You may impress many people, but certainly not me.