QuackingJimbo

Please describe a time you've had a question and successfully used a chat widget to solve it

This hypothetical HFT firm is part of "the rest of the market reacting"

They just happen to be the first among all participants to react. Why is that bad? Somebody has to be first

Liquidity drying up when shit hits the fan is a fundamental aspect of markets that has been around forever

I won't go as far as to say that it's a feature not a bug. But I will say that the problem is currently the least problematic that it has ever been. Because of HFT, stability returns within minutes, rather than hours/days/weeks (which is how long it used to take before various technological innovations)

The "brain drain" argument is fair, but you can successfully apply the brain drain argument to anything short of curing diseases or feeding the hungry

I consider HFT to be no worse of a brain drain than, say, Instagram, or any similar virus

Maybe I'm biased, but I say that anyone who uses stops has voluntarily left the "average investor" realm and entered the "amateur day trader" arena

This is fair to say, but HFT is a very small industry. The number of people getting "rich" off of HFT is less than 100. The rest of us are just comfortably compensated tech workers, same as a Google or FB engineer

I work in HFT as a quant dev

I am proud of my work and find HFT to be an interesting intersection of computer science, math, game theory, economics, and psychology

As far as the societal benefit of HFT, I think that it is neutral. It doesn't hurt anybody. It might even help a little bit (liquidity and tight spreads save people a little money and maybe spur some economic growth).

However, this particular aspect (the physical latency war) makes me literally sick to my stomach. I hate reading about it and I hate thinking about it. It's like -- what are we even doing here guys?

You are pretty much already there

For the majority of people, I would recommend just buying Vanguard funds

If you really want to trade anything else, IB is the way to go

Thank you -- you're one of the few Robinhood critics who recognizes this (rather than their routing of orders to HFT) as the real problem

Robinhood disgusts me. 99% of their users should not be trading individual stocks (or worse)

I work in HFT. He is completely correct

I always laugh when people say Robinhood is a good thing for society. Their zero fees, cool app, and gamification of trading is simply ushering fools into a casino

I sleep better working in HFT than working in regular tech

HFT, at worst, adds exactly zero value to society. I don't buy into the memes of "we provide liquidity!" or "we make markets efficient!" being some noble mission. But HFT certainly does no harm

Regular tech ultimately just pushes ads or products on people, which I consider poisonous to society

``vector<vector<int>> grid{{1,1,0},{1,2,0},{0,2,2}};`` in C++

IB and sportsbooks are completely different

IB charges you a fee and then matches your trade with someone else. After this trade happens, IB no longer carries any risk

Sportsbooks charge you a fee and then take the other side of your bet themselves

People running "stat arb" strategies which see FB going down so they sell other tech stocks

I have the same problem.

For pants, try Bonobos "athletic fit".

For everything else, I got nothing.

A knowledgeable crypto friend of mine says that the primary factor is the extent of the pre-mining.

> There are a few places where this is not true

Where?