This story is only going to get bigger, its very far from being over. Wonder when the transaction tax comes into play.....
"Filter the bid ask size to only include offers that stick around for a longer period of time." Explain how this could possibly be done, when all the ECN's are aggregated. Even if there are feeds that break out each individual order, few would have access to that . And I doubt they exist for most ECN's
the combination of hft with what used to be archipelago,electronic clearing where all your orders are entered and executed,...you can do the search and find out who owns them now, ....and if you dont believe that there is someone out there viewing these orders ,....(which by the way have a customer number and your personal acct,long or short,can be tracked,so if you were a large player ,that would make your acct even more interesting,,....did u see the the recent article about these firms making millions daily with never a losing day, month after month,that is impossible,unless your cheating) and frontrunning them ,then you sir are in the dark...and if you believe frontrunning and inside information is the new order ,then you are the problem
Cramer is such a freaking idiot along with the idiot senator he had on the show. HFTs make the bid/ask spread for me much tighter. Just because you are having problems trading against the HFTs does not make them "bad" as they are portrayed in this video segment. Again, I would like to reiterate that Cramer is a moron.
Impossible for them to have months of pure profits? I dont think so. A lot of HFT systems are move away from the idea of 'trading' towards being 'market service providers'. Providing liquidity to whoever wants its, often based on arbitrage opportunities. And as we know, service providing is an extremely low risk business. How many consecutive months of profit do you think NASDAQ has had? or BATS or NYSE? I doubt they have ever posted a monthly loss. You make the incorrect assumption that these HFT are merely traders. When your algorithm's value is driven 90-95% from providing service to the market, 5-10% risk or directional bets, its not surprising at all that some companies never see a monthly loss.
Man, gimme a fucking break. You never complained about the HFT's on the way up so why are you bitching so much now? Sure, I find HFT's despicable but I find your hypocrisy even more disgusting. You really think it's the HFT's that were the culprits behind the "Flash Crash"? No matter how big any of those HFT's might be, to think that they can cause such a carnage just doesn't add up. We didn't encounter anything remotely similar even in the midst of both Bear Stearns and Lehaman debacle. I've seen plenty of effing crazy actions in the last 20 years but I've never seen anything like the one on 05/06. Barring the Black Monday of 1987, which was an all-day event might I emphasize, this one is by far the worst. Here's my own conspiracy theory. Call me crazy but I'm starting to believe that it was Uncle Sam cashing in his profit on that day.