<b>EU launches plan to tax trading in 11 countries from 2014</b> Feb 14th 2013 http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/02/14/eu-transactiontax-idUKL5N0BD89Q20130214 'The European Commission set out how its financial transaction tax (FTT), aimed at making banks pay for taxpayer help they received in the financial crisis, would apply from next January, the rate at which it would be set, and safeguards to stop avoidance....' cont. From Jan 24th: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100403170 'As it is levied on each transaction, it is expected to affect high frequency trading disproportionately. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) expects derivatives activities to drop by between 60-90 percent in countries where the tax is introduced.'
Did you see the part where day to day trading by individuals would be exempt? Who gives a rats ass about HFT being driven out,by your quote you are coming over as a HFT sympathizer. Not having to witness a bunch of robots try and fuck eachother at lightspeed all day is a win/win for me.
Tax this: (from Reuters article) Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at the ACCA, an independent accounting body in London, said banks and brokers will take no chances and create a "firewall" by offering products that cannot be "tainted" by the tax.
Here is the commission's Q&A from todays presser: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-98_en.htm The full text of the proposal is not yet released. This proposal, or what will be left of it, after council negotiations, will have to be implemented by the 11 participating national governments, and implementation might vary by country. So there is still plenty of room and time to get a lot of lobbying done, and its still by and large unclear how the final result will look in detail. And the details matter a lot. Here are a few random thoughts about this memo: * it reads like the tax is levied on institutions only, not individuals * extra-territorial FTT collection is a fantasy. They will certainly not be able to tax anything in UK/USA * start date of 1.1. 2014 is a fantasy as well. This will be a administrative monster and IT would take longer, even if the final law would be agreed upon right now * FX spot is exempt <3 * Eurex/Deutsche Börse will have to relocate or get some serious lobbying done * there appear to be no marketmaking expemptions, at least in the memo, but i would expect this will be in for certain. There is just no way around that, safe for killing off exchanges completely. That means that all the 'evil' HFT firms will not pay this, since they all have mm status (see french FTT, uk stamp duty). * it will kill the smaller regional exchanges like Munich and so on. Those should have died years ago anyways.
Day to day trading, you mean this? "- Day-to-day financial activities of ordinary citizens and businesses (e.g. insurance contracts, mortgage and business lending, credit card transactions, payment services, deposits, spot currency transactions etc.) are excluded from the FTT, in order to protect the real economy;" - sounds more like business trade not 'trading' I am a daytrader, as in do 100 or so trades in the same product, I do not automate my trades but by definitions I have seen I am high frequency trading just not on a nano second timeframe. Nasdaq's new derivatives exchange will open in London in April I believe and I hear they will offer bund bobl schatz etc but if the underlying is issued in a member state I don't see if they could avoid the tax of 'connection to a member state'. Eurex is headquartered outside the zone (Switzerland) already but I don't see them dodging it on anything other than SMI index. So far there has not been a conclusion reached on market maker status.
I was referring to the "ordinary citizens" part,you have gone on to list relevant businesses but have missed the obvious. You are not HFT.You could find a related definition for almost anything if you look hard enough. Eurex still has a business operation in Frankfurt I believe,they have had a presence in Switzerland since they merged the DTB with Soffex many years ago. If you do the amount of trades you say,i'm assuming that's not a 50 lot being filled in 1s and 2s but 100 different orders entered/completed then you should understand that if something isn't done very soon about this whole HFT/algo joke then there will be NO business in the next few years anyway unless you are a huge organization that can keep pace with tech and inevitable massive losses.
http://www.eurexgroup.com/group-en/...en.xpand_2013_cw30_en_2013-08-06-11:51_591814 Deutsche Börse publishes discussion paper on financial transaction tax http://www.eurexgroup.com/blob/group-en/46504-587074/587076/1/data/20130731_discussion_paper_ftt.pdf
Good bye, EU. This is a self-destruction only the foolish neo-Nazis in Germany will celebrate, knowing that it will lead to depression era resentment toward countries doing better than them, and that eventually leads to conflict and war through economic attrition that they brought on themselves. Smoot-Hawley Woo Yay is what to call the new Tobin Tax there.