Hacker News Reader

What I don't understand is why the markets doesn't create a new order type, a delayed one that is created with a set trigger time. That way bulk sellers and buyers could set up big distributed trades in advance without having to resort to the same game as the arbitrage players are doing with locations close to the market and whatnot.

View on HN

The biggest obstacle to this is that the Exchange's primary customers are the electronic trading firms. A firm like NASDAQ makes the majority of its revenue from co-location services and high-speed market data lines.

It's difficult for a new exchange to break into the space (or an existing one to go out on its own) with rules that disadvantage high speed traders. IEX at 0.9% market share for example has been working on solving the problems with a slow SIP feed for a couple years now.

I like these kids of ideas, but a bit of regulation couldn't hurt to speed things up...

Even if an order type like that existed, there's still the concept of "there's no such thing as a free lunch." A cost of doing business in trading is the spread between the bid and the offer. If liquidity providers take too much adverse selection, they'll just widen the spread tomorrow. So, sure, you help the liquidity taker today at the expensive the maker, and tomorrow the maker will increase his prices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com