Former Goldman Programmer's Conviction Overturned

i_want_you_to_throw_ writes "The legal woes will soon be over for Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman Sachs Group computer programmer who had been convicted of stealing part of the Wall Street bank's high-frequency trading code. A federal appeals court overturned his conviction and recommended acquittal. We previously discussed this story when he was sentenced to 97 months in prison. It will be interesting to see their reasoning (an opinion is to be released) as well as what this may mean for other programmers developing high frequency trading code."

Comments

90% reduction

[alexander_686]

Unless you count a 90% reduction in trading costs as “nothing”.

Back in the day Market Makers would take $.125 to $.25 for every share traded. And woe to you if you were trying to sell more than 10k because then you would really be scalped. And then you had to add broker commissions on top of that.

I would rather pay high frequency traders $.01 a share and have a deep liquid market then go back to the good old days

Re:90% reduction

[Anonymous Coward]

Those fees are only a problem if you don't plan to hold on to your stock very long: after a few years or more of capital value change plus dividends, it's insignificant.

What's that you say? You like to buy and sell on a timeframe of weeks? Well, that's speculation not investment, and we need less of that. I'm happy to have that anti-speculation incentive built-in.

Re:90% reduction

[maple_shaft]

But as was already said, this is speculative trading and NOT an investment. If you are a small time investor and are trying to engage in speculative trading then you are just asking to be bilked of your money. You don't overhear the chatter on the trading floor. You don't see breaking news happening before it goes public. The day traders and hedge funds will eat your lunch. You might as well be playing blackjack at the casino.

If you are a small time investor you are much better off studying earnings reports and making long term investment choices in blue chip stocks that pay dividends than trying to play the big boy games.

Re:In essence

[maroberts]

If you produce a product as part of work for hire and then steal that code and sell it on to a third party, it's still a form of theft.

It was however, perfectly legitimate for him to walk out with the knowledge of how stuff worked in his head and sell his expertise; I'm surprised he didn't do so. Once you know how something is done, you have solved the hard part and can spout a new set of code out of your head with little difficulty. Often producing a product the second time means you can do things better and faster anyway.

There's a lot of blurring between personal and work computers nowadays, which does mean you may have a copy of stuff you have developed on your home PC, and that can make things awkward. But if you do mean to sell something you've worked on to another party, you'd damn well better make sure that right is in your contract.

Re:Shouldn't be legal to use in the first place.

[maroberts]

If you want to finance your retirement or your childs education, you don't need to sell shares every 5 seconds, so liquidity means little in this regard. It would not be the end of the world having to wait a week or two for money for such purposes.