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Comment by stjohnswarts | Hacker News Reader

I agree, what I personally think needs to change is high speed/algorithmic trading on the millisecond (microsecond?) level. It should be humans trading, not machines. Sure they can listen to the machines but at the end of the day it should be on human time, say at least 10 minutes for transactions to complete without possibility of any changes to the transaction

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When humans did all the trading, it cost drastically more to trade, all that money went directly into the pockets of market insiders, and the whole market was crooked as a barrel of fishhooks. Google "odd eighths scandal".

You can't access this high speed trading. This is the toy of billionaires that can afford microwave link between New York and Chicago and have dedicated teams of FPGA developers to write high speed network stacks with trading logic embedded in them.

This is what the parent comment was talking about.

I don't need to be able to access high speed trading to access the benefits!

I have friends who work for such firm, both are FPGA designers, the company has a microwave link because speed of light in fiber is only 2/3c. Hundreds of people are working there for the sole benefit of the private owners.

It's possible I was confused.. I thought you were complaining about the inequality between high speed traders and mere humans clicking on web pages..

HFT trade with retail. Your comment doesn’t make much sense.

In case anyone else got very confused, FPGA has nothing to do with female golf.

The market was designed as a system for human interaction. I think the atomic unit of time should be at the clock speed of humans. It increases the transaction cost, but in a more responsible, sustainable way imo.

What's the benefit to me of increasing my pension provider's costs, therefore making me worse off in my retirement?

When we talk about "increased spreads" everyone pays the costs of that. What's the upside?

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