The small time 'millionaires' are regularly eaten for reasons of making it appear equitable to those even more humble. But the BIG winners just keep eating and eating and eating. And as long as money is power and that power is legally allowed to influence elections Wall Street will remain a corrupt casino.
The small time 'millionaires' are regularly eaten for reasons of making it appear equitable to those even more humble. But the BIG winners just keep eating and eating and eating. And as long as money is power and that power is legally allowed to influence elections Wall Street will remain a corrupt casino.
While I have not read the book, I did watch the 60 minutes episode last night, and unlike most stories of it's kind where the rich always fuck the poor with no substantiating proof, or sketchy proof at best, this makes total sense to me as someone who used to trade for a living.
But contrary to the howling masses that this is another example of the rich fucking the poor, this is an example of the rich and the creative fucking everybody else, other rich people included, including companies much richer than themselves. Truth be told the average investor is probably the least impacted, especially the Mari type investor who buys and holds for extended periods of time. Getting your order in a millisecond before anyone else is going to make you a penny a share at most, so the average investor who puts a bid in at $29.43 and gets filled at $29.44 isn't even going to know he got fucked, but the trading desk that does a 100 million shares a day is getting fucked out of a million bucks a day.
It's an interesting story, but i doubt many of the geniuses here will get past the attention grabbing headline
I don't necessarily mind that it was PR for someone's book, but when you make higher claims to turn a book release into this type of "reporting", that's different. They had no counterarguments, didn't interview any of the stock exchanges, nor any high frequency traders, no quantitative guys AT ALL, instead they focused on someone's business, and had someone who was convicted of insider trading saying the whole concept was "interesting".
Awful 60 Minutes.
That penny a share multiplied over several million trades a day over a period of several month's does add up to quite a bit of serious $$$$$$
But contrary to the howling masses that this is another example of the rich fucking the poor, this is an example of the rich and the creative fucking everybody else, other rich people included, including companies much richer than themselves. Truth be told the average investor is probably the least impacted, especially the Mari type investor who buys and holds for extended periods of time. Getting your order in a millisecond before anyone else is going to make you a penny a share at most, so the average investor who puts a bid in at $29.43 and gets filled at $29.44 isn't even going to know he got fucked, but the trading desk that does a 100 million shares a day is getting fucked out of a million bucks a day.
It's an interesting story, but i doubt many of the geniuses here will get past the attention grabbing headline
and it's only other traders that have a lot of volume that will ever notice it, that's why it's never been front page news. Even an average "day trader" might trade a few hundred thousand shares a day, I know my volume was at least that much "back in the day" and I was a very little fish, even that "small" volume can add up to quite a bit, especially when you are only trying to make a few pennies a share on each trade to begin with.
For the retail investor, or as I like to call it the "Marikod" buy and hold investor, this is really a non issue, as they are not likely to buy and or sell more than a few thousand shares in an entire year.
If you put a bid in at $29.43, it will either be filled at that price or a lower price. Your order will not be executed if the cheapest available is $29.44.
I never buy at the "market " price but always specify a bid price. if someone can come in and scoop me for a few pennies a share, more power to them. I don't really care. I rarely buy more then a 1,000 shares at a time. I am not a trader but rather an investor and it is rare that something stays in my portfolio for less then a year. I always use a bid/ask price not so much for the pennies but on some of the more thinly traded issues, I can amount to $.30-$.50 a share.
This has little to no effect on guys like you, but to a trader it's huge. I started trading well before they went to the decimal system, and I would routinely get fucked by the market makers for eighths or even quarters at times, but volume back then was a tiny fraction of what it is today.
Also high volume traders never touch thinly traded issues, so the $.30-$.50 spreads never apply to them.
and many if not most traders put in "market", not "limit" orders when a stock is running, which is the type of trading that the high frequency traders do. It's one thing to trade a thousand shares utilizing SOES, it's quite a different story when you are trading a half a million shares of a rapidly moving, heavily traded issue. What you are talking about is valid, just not relevant to high frequency trading.
I agree this action is meaningless to the average individual investor...where we get screwed is when the market makers move the stock up and down to suit their needs, taking out stops before lifting the stock.....
and that practice really has nothing to do with the high frequency traders.
You are absolutely right about the "stops" Once upon a time stop loss orders could lock in a profit or limit a loss with almost absolute certainty, but no more. Once you have had an issue blow right through your stop, you learn that lesson for good.
investor, or even wannabe market timers like St. Croix who makes buy and sell decisions based on short term factors.
The day traders, however, are another story. If you bought E signal or Trade Station and thought you were on a level playing field with the big boys, you soon learn you are in fact just a few seconds behind.
But, as anyone who watches CNBC knows, this is an old story. I didn't bother to watch Lewis on 60 Minutes bc I already knew what he was going to say. Far more interesting to see the latest on the missing plane.
It is been rigged for decades. You didn’t know that?
The whole damn country is rigged against the working middle class. What’s new?