Page 2 is rigged.

Quote :

"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6cdf6a90-9a7f-11e3-8232-00144feab7de.html#axzz2tyFuKC2u Warren Buffett's Businesswire (supplies news releases to investors) voluntarily steps forward to stop selling direct feeds to high frequency traders for the overall good of the market. Probably not the most lucrative corner of his business, but I'm still impressed."

I'm sure he had better reasons than "morality"... Giving up what he was selling probably protected his assets that are subjected to the potentially damaging effects of high frequency trading

[Edited on February 22, 2014 at 11:55 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2014 11:53:28 PM

^5

I came across War is a Racket (1935) sometime after the peak of the Iraq war when I was going through Republican withdrawal and transitioning towards a progressive-independent mindset. Needless to say it describes everything I was starting to feel during that transitional period after realizing that I had been lied to by the mainstream media, the powers that be, and my staunchly conservative parents. Highly recommended.

2/23/2014 2:47:57 PM

^^ you right. I think I read recently that some of it had to do with some Attorneys General starting to poke around.






HFT is a big deal, IMO, but we've mostly just gotten a trickle of new articles on it over the last ~5 years. Then.......



BOOM! Media darling drops a book and suddenly the progressive blogosphere can't write enough articles or get enough interviews. I appreciate why it happened this way, but, God, modern reporters are lazy.

4/11/2014 8:58:29 AM

If that book is anything like the 60 minutes piece about it, then it's a bunch of panty-twisting over absolutely nothing. Waaaaaaaah, someone pays more money to get better information and can make better decisions because of it, waaaaaaaaaah!!! The people bitching and moaning the most about this are the big hedge firms, yet he makes it sound like mom and pop traders are getting fucked. News flash: mom and pop traders aren't trading directly on the exchanges, nor are they trading tens of thousands of shares at a time. Either way, there's clearly an easy way to "fix" the "problem", and hedge funds can do it themselves easily.

4/11/2014 8:35:53 PM

Quote :

" News flash: mom and pop traders aren't trading directly on the exchanges, nor are they trading tens of thousands of shares at a time."

The funds the majority of them are investing in are.

4/11/2014 8:48:18 PM

And? The claim was that mom and pop were getting picked off by HFTs sniffing their orders at the exchanges. If mom and pop's orders never hit the exchanges, then mom and pop aren't getting picked off by HFTs. Thus, it's just the big hedge funds that are bitching and moaning because the bid/ask spreads are getting smaller

4/11/2014 9:18:23 PM

Why is aaronburro so viciously opposed to something he clearly knows little about?

4/11/2014 9:59:28 PM

Lots of people blamed the trend toward off exchange an dark pool trading on HFT (my understanding is this trend is leveling off though). You can imagine how easy it is to target big trades and front run those prices. With off exchange trading, mom and pop are likely paying higher fees though.

4/12/2014 7:45:46 AM

It would be easy to target big trades if you continue to send them to all the exchanges at the exact same time. Stagger your messages, like they did in the book, and the HFT advantage there is gone, no gov't intervention needed. And with eTrade and the like, mom and pop might be paying higher fees, but the spreads are lower, so it may cancel out in the end. Like I said before, the people getting mad are the ones who were fleecing others before, so I don't really have any sympathy for them, especially if they can't bother to implement the solution that everyone already knows...

4/12/2014 1:55:27 PM

Smaller bid/ask spreads are a negative for retail traders, but the pros of HFT outweigh the cons. The main positives being increased liquidity and no longer paying a broker 2% per trade.. If Vanguard, the largest mutual fund company in the world (and investor owned), isn't too concerned then neither am I.

If you are a retail investor making a lot of trades, maybe you should rethink your approach.

4/12/2014 10:19:04 PM

http://www.policymic.com/articles/87891/walmart-s-wages-are-so-low-you-re-actually-paying-for-their-employees

The last paragraph is insane, criminal, and frustratingly sad.

4/18/2014 3:04:22 PM

^ details on that last paragraph

http://www.policymic.com/articles/87823/one-chart-that-shows-just-how-screwed-up-our-tax-system-really-is

4/18/2014 7:31:59 PM

Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

Quote :

"The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite. So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page. This is not news, you say. Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here's how they explain it: Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power."

4/18/2014 8:22:08 PM

Ha, I was just about to post that, as it nearly follows from my 2 previous links.

4/18/2014 8:26:17 PM

http://www.policymic.com/articles/88225/new-data-shows-america-has-lost-one-of-the-things-that-made-it-great

4/24/2014 1:41:46 PM

But Obama's America is amazing.

I'm doing just fine.

4/24/2014 1:43:27 PM

http://www.policymic.com/articles/87203/within-a-generation-america-is-on-track-to-become-a-second-rate-nation

Quote :

"If you've been suspecting America has been rapidly stumbling downhill since the start of the millennium, there's now evidence to back that view. The U.S. is far from No. 1 — it's now No. 16. New data from the Social Progress Imperative demonstrates that the U.S. is falling behind. The study ranks countries according to their Social Progress Index, which includes not just GDP but variables like "personal safety, ecosystem sustainability, health and wellness, shelter, sanitation, equality and inclusion, and personal freedom and choice.""

The results were pretty uninspiring. For the second-richest country in the world per capita ($45,336), we sure are lousy compared to a lot of other countries in the overall ranking. And on specific issues the U.S. stands a lot worse. America ranks 70th in health, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, 39th in basic education, 34th in access to water and 31st in personal safety.

These numbers lead AlterNet's CJ Werleman to conclude America is "fast becoming a second-rate nation," and it's hard to disagree with some of his points. For example:

America's rapid descent into impoverished nation status is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. By every measure, we look like a broken banana republic. Not a single U.S. city is included in the world's top 10 most livable cities. Only one U.S. airport makes the list of the top 100 in the world. Our roads, schools and bridges are falling apart, and our trains — none of them high-speed — are running off their tracks.[quote]

Click to read more

5/6/2014 11:58:26 PM

Welp, the justice department finally got these banking assholes to admit guilt for manipulating Libor and other market rates, so we can confirm that shit is, indeed, rigged. Total of $5 billion to be doled out in fines, probably not enough to discourage the behavior though

5/21/2015 8:11:11 AM