High Frequency Trading

As the only way to make money in this market is to mimic the big boys and to churn stock after stock (especially those with massive short interests) then closing 100% in cash at the end of every day, it was only a matter of time before someone started pitching the very same product that Comedy Central's Cash Cow highlighted is a sure way to make gobs of free money, to retail investors. That this someone happened to be Lime Brokerage is probably not very surprising.

"Meanwhile, every 20 milliseconds "HFT-Quants" are taking another "too-dumb-to-stop-trading" little investor trapped in the illusion that Fannie, Freddie and AIG will "be worth something, someday." "HFT-Quants" don't think long term. Their algorithms think in milliseconds, just enough time to skim more money from all the 'dumb money' out there." Paul Farrell, MarketWatch

Dear Senator Kaufman, we at Zero Hedge applaud your effort to bring transparency to, and evaluate the various new forces that, for better or worse, determine the modern market landscape. However, we would like to bring to your attention a fact which renders your entire approach of seeking fair and unbiased commentary from the SEC irrevocably moot. The reason is that the SEC, in alignment with many of the very industry players who may be abusing market structure for their own tiered benefit, stands to benefit significantly from an increased amount of daytrading volume across all markets, and, in fact, based on actions as recent as 4 months ago by the SEC, the regulator is well aware of the monetary benefits that ever-increasing churn creates for the commission and is fully intent on capitalizing on them. We thus suggest you bypass any protocol that has an SEC intermediation and go directly to penning a Bill which, we trust, will prove to be more fair and objective than anything the SEC would ever provide you with. The reason for the SEC's insurmountable conflict of interest is the so-called Section 31.

Yet another good introduction for the novices in the field. Keep in mind the various participants have extensive interests so read between the lines.

"In response to recent media stories on High Frequency Trading, we wanted to clarify our position to clients."

Whitney Tilson continues investigating High Frequency Trading

Lately, as the topic of High Frequency Trading has gotten front page prominence, there has been much confusion as to the top line impact on traders that utilize HFT methods, and inversely how much of a "toll" on investors high frequency trading is. In other words: what is the cost of liquidity?

Damage control... Or is Goldman a little worried what Direct Edge may disclose.

From the appended Schumer piece on Bloomberg:

“Goldman Sachs believes high-frequency trading should have an accompanying obligation to provide liquidity, and be subject to appropriate regulatory oversight,” Canaday said.

Ed, we have been giving you the chance to provide your side of the story for months. Please take us up on the offer.

HFT creates systemic instability and makes market manipulation much easier.

Zero Hedge recently had some choice words against a subset of HFT, namely Flash Trading, and as even Irene Aldridge confirmed earlier, there is something very wrong with that subset of program trading. It seems our admonitions have fallen on the right ears. In a startling development of anti-establishmentarian activism, Senator Charles Schumer has asked the SEC to ban Flash Trading in its entirety, as it "gives high-speed traders an unfair advantage over other investors."

First Goldman, now High Frequency Trading... The media onslaught is converging.

Better late than never.

"Lots of feedback on the high frequency trading issue"

The only benefit from Sergey's recent brush with Goldman Sachs, a/k/a the FBI, seems to have been an increased curiosity if not awareness in this most nebulous topic by pretty much everyone with an even remote interest in Wall Street... a 500% increase over one month in fact.

When discussing high-frequency trading, Zero Hedge recently asked
"As Goldman is becoming the primary conduit of trading
(whether principal or agency) in virtually all markets, the risk of a
massive liquidity drain becomes exponentially larger, and the risk of
an exogenous event approaches LTCM and Lehman levels. It is this key risk driver that regulators should be focusing on,
instead of chasing and attempting to punish the perpetrators of the
most recent market crash (we are not saying they should not, but they
should prioritize and now should focus on what is
most critical to maintaining a functioning market topology). " It seems we were wrong about authoritarian figures never predicting the implicit risk of this subset of program
trading - ironically, it was well over 20 years ago and none other than
the future Chairman of the Federal Reserve Larry Summers who had some
prophetic words of caution. In a paper titled "Commentary on 'Policies to Curb Stock Market Volatility" in which Larry was discussing the cause and effect of Black Monday (about which he is quite wrong that nobody had seen coming), he lays out some oddly forward looking observations about program trading, or positive-feedback trading as high frequency trading was yet to become a staple market diet.