恶人谷

On A 'Rigged' Wall Street, Milliseconds Make All The Difference
April 01, 2014 1:28 PM

The stock market is rigged," Michael Lewis tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "It's rigged for the benefit for really a handful of insiders. It's rigged to ... maximize the take of Wall Street, of banks, the exchanges and the high-frequency traders at the expense of ordinary investors."

Lewis is the author of several books about the world of finance, including Liar's Poker and The Big Short. His new book Flash Boys is about the form of computerized transactions known as high-frequency trading, in which the fastest computers with the highest connection speeds get the information first, and make the trade before anyone else can. A millisecond — even a nanosecond — can make all the difference between how much money is made or lost on any transaction.

You'd be surprised to hear what investment banks do to get that nanosecond edge, and how they often use it in ways Lewis describes as predatory. The victims range from some investment houses to individual investors. Lewis says high-frequency trades can end up hurting the returns on your retirement accounts. The FBI, Wall Street regulators and New York's attorney general are investigating high-frequency trading, and whether it has created an uneven playing field.

"There's a decline of trust in the marketplace because it's not as trustworthy," Lewis says. "And if it's not as trustworthy then the whole economy suffers. Trust is the grease that keeps the system working."

豪情 wrote:少生孩子多种树（买房）。

从社会来说还是需要新劳动力的。除了社保，各种投资也需要人接盘。

Knowing wrote:增长的区域不一样，我们现在人很难想象将来。几千年前天天劳作打猎还不能果腹的古人也无法想象现在有人吃饱不是问题天天坐家里打电子游戏。也没法理解为什么有人要脚下绑刀在冰上转来转去还引以为乐，还有更疯狂的人冒险坐着铁鸟大老远去看别人在冰上转，还引以为乐！
现在看的见的growth 就很多啊，生物科学那么多没被征服的区域，没准什么为了搞HFT搞出来的并行硬件技术改改就用到算分子制药上了什么的。美苏当年军备竞赛星球大战后来不就弄出了AT＆T。。退一万步说，现在买卖股票方便，是股市电子化带来的便利。如果说现在市场rigged, 那么电子化交易出现前的市场简直就是old boys club. 这个说起来又是很长的话题也没人感兴趣.

The effect , as measured by a group of Canadian academics, was swift and startling. The number of messages sent to the Toronto Stock Exchange dropped by 30 percent, and the bid-ask spread rose by 9 percent, an indicator of lower liquidity and higher transaction costs.

A big investor called Brad and said he wanted to sell 5 million shares of Solectron. The public stock markets—the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq—showed the current market. Say it was 3.70–3.75, which is to say you could sell Solectron for $3.70 a share or buy it for $3.75. The problem was that, at those prices, only a million shares were bid for and offered. The big investor who wished to sell 5 million shares of Solectron called Brad because he wanted Brad to take the risk on the other 4 million shares. And so Brad bought the shares at $3.65, slightly below the price quoted in the public markets. But when he turned to the public markets—the markets on his trading screens—the share price instantly moved. Almost as if the market had read his mind. Instead of selling a million shares at $3.70, as he’d assumed he could do, he sold a few hundred thousand and trigged a minicollapse in the price of Solectron. It was as if someone knew what he was trying to do and was reacting to his desire to sell before he had fully expressed it. By the time he was done selling all 5 million shares, at prices far below $3.70, he had lost a small fortune.

If that was the case, he asked them, why did the market in any given stock dry up only when he was trying to trade in it? To make his point, he asked the developers to stand behind him and watch while he traded. “I’d say, ‘Watch closely. I am about to buy one hundred thousand shares of AMD. I am willing to pay forty-eight dollars a share. There are currently one hundred thousand shares of AMD being offered at forty-eight dollars a share—ten thousand on BATS, thirty-five thousand on the New York Stock Exchange, thirty thousand on Nasdaq, and twenty-five thousand on Direct Edge.’ You could see it all on the screens. We’d all sit there and stare at the screen and I’d have my finger over the Enter button. I’d count out loud to five . . .
“ ‘One . . .
“ ‘Two. . . . See, nothing’s happened.
“ ‘Three. . . . Offers are still there at forty-eight . . .
“ ‘Four. . . . Still no movement.
“ ‘Five.’ Then I’d hit the Enter button and—boom!—all hell would break loose. The offerings would all disappear, and the stock would pop higher.”
At which point he turned to the guys standing behind him and said, “You see, I’m the event. I am the news.”