Well, I think the picosecond thing is a bit of a red herring. It seems physically impossible.
As for what value the HFT guys provide, the fact that they are fast is what allows them to be there making prices for you. You wouldn't be able to trade at those tight spreads, in those amounts, if the guys offering the prices were not confident they could dump the risk (often on another HFT). Just like the department store wouldn't offer you stuff at a low markup if they couldn't source it.
I don't see your point. They don't affect your transaction? They make it possible by being there to trade with you. And they are not doing nothing, they have the risk that the price moves against them.
The argument is so muddled, it's hard to see what it is. Most of these orderbook arguments on slashdot are oversimplified, and don't take into account real-world effects. They lean excessively on "ceteris paribus", where too many simplifying assumptions have been made. For instance, there's often no accounting for the extra orders that would exist in a more liquid market.
Well, one thing to note is that most of these HFTs are really just trading with each other, diversifying the risks they occasionally take on from outside participants. They are essentially doing what the old school market makers are doing, faster, and without the skulduggery (favoured friends in the pit, tip-offs for frontrunning, etc.)
They are better able to give tight prices when their leans (their get-outs) are quickly accessible. This is no different from when you phone a guy offering to buy a car. Suppose he's got another guy wanting to sell one, but he doesn't know if the guy is still firm, because he's uncontactable. So he offers you a wider margin, on the risk that he won't be able to source the car. Now, if the other guy happened to be on his mobile, and could be leaned on, your dealer (market maker) might give you a tighter spread. He's happy to make less money if the deals can be done often, and reliably. That's how liquidity and speed are related.
I take it you've never bought anything from, say, a department store, or a supermarket? They are middle men as well, and in fact make their living by taking out a difference between the production price and your price...
Do you mean Bids/Asks? Puts and Calls are types of option. I'd hate to think the people who modded this up didn't know their arses from their elbows...
You want to make the market more fair, by going through LIVE brokers? Are you crazy? It's the living brokers who spend all day trying to rape their clients...
Why don't you just let people trade electronically, and they don't even need to talk to anyone?
Don't be retarded. Just because it's not officially a declaration of war doesn't mean it isn't a war. In fact, the US Congress has approved what is effectively a war on several occasions:
This is a common way for people to communicate. Facebook is going to be "linked to" everything as long as this is a fact.
In other news: Facebook is linked to 50% of parties. Facebook is linked to 80% of weddings. Facebook is linked to 100% of political. Facebook is linked to 65% of friendships. Facebook is linked to 90% of people liking stuff.
It's not enough to find the Higgs and confirm the standard model. No, we must always be looking for strange new shit that violates the laws of physics as we know them. New particles, new types of matter, dark energy, broken symmetry, anything unusual. And if it can't be proven so much the better. Yes, I'm still waiting for them to realize that Keplers laws do not apply to galaxies, and the galactic rotation curve does not require dark matter to explain. Some of them also fail at application of the divergence theorem when it come to gravity (they basically assume any mass distribution can be treated as a point mass). Let's get the fundamentals right first before we run off looking for actual violations of the laws of physics please.
Well hey, there's still physical phenomena which are poorly understood. OTTOMH, sonoluminescence, turbulence.
Well according to my democratic acquaintances, money is not fairly distributed and needs to be taken from those who have too much regardless of how hard they work for it and given to those who have none regardless of how little they work for it.
Bull. Fucking. Shit. You haven't heard that. Ever. That's just your absolutely pathetic understanding of the "progressive" agenda.
It's probably not your fault though -- smart people with a lot of money have been painting progressives with that brush for a long time, and a lot of dupes have fallen for it.
Dude, this is a classic private equity move. And your guys Blackstone are one of the major players. Basically, they leverage the company, and pay themselves a dividend. Why do they do this? Well, it's not different from your pop mortgaging his hardware store, and paying himself a lump sum. In this case, it's a sale/leaseback, but it's completely the same. You get a lump sum in return paying a loan. The store is then burdened with a loan that needs to be paid off, which if it's a mom/pop shop will be stressful. So mom/pop won't do it. In your big corporation though, it's the employees that get stressed.
Well, it's a compromise between only having one guy make a load of money on an idea, vs a whole bunch of people ripping it off and not making much. I don't have anything against people making lots of money, and 5M is just an example figure. And as I mentioned elsewhere, it's really just trying to think of some alternative to just having a single length of time.
The smart people in society are those best able to make these tough judgments. Who do you trust: smart people or the uneducated? How many problems in America would be solved tomorrow by removing idiots from positions where they influence others?
There will be fewer idiots in the world when said idiots are practised in the skill of judging things for themselves, and suffering the consequences of their own decisions. Which they wont become if immodest geniuses are making all their decisions for them.
Further, I'm not looking forward to being ruled by the self-appointed aristocracy of the nerds.
Amen to that. Ironically, it takes a well educated person to string together a list of random facts/preconceptions into a compelling tale about why the world would be better if only we could see the world the same way as them. But the same clever people cannot deign to see the world through someone else's perspective. It always ends up being "don't you get it, you idiots? XYZ is a brilliant plan. I just need some power to implement it. Now bend over..."
And Norway would never seriously propose that sort of law.
Are you telling us they don't regulate behaviour, which is what banning late night gaming is? Just because they don't have this particular rule doesn't mean they don't interfere in what ought to be people's own right to decide, which is the real issue. For instance, they have a rule about the composition of boards: you need a certain proportion of women. (Well, of each sex, but you know what that means.)
It seems to me that it's easier to figure out a good time limit than a monetary one.
Say, the $5M. Why precisely that number? How do you adapt to the economy? $5M in 10 years might be $1M today. Also some works are expensive. That would make big movies go out of copyright right in the first week.
Of course there's a million variations. How about we say 5M in profits? Then you're guaranteed to make money before your copyright expires. How about we inflation index the awards at the beginning, so the time value thing is less of a problem, but you still need to collect the money sooner rather than later? And instead of 5M specifically, we say when the IRR is x%? Etc, etc. Nothing's perfect.
The point is a specific length of time is a bit of a blunt instrument (in fact, rules are blunt instruments). If we want people to make money from creative works, but want to limit their power over derivative works, this is something we could think about.
Well, why make time the only parameter? If you're interested in new works related to something existing, how about you just say "when you've made 5M bucks off your book, it's off copyright"? That way hot topics can be written about in soon after they break, and many different authors might benefit in a short period of time. At the same time, people who've written niche stuff can continue to collect royalties for many years.
What about just having the drones based on land, flying around high-risk areas (possibly only when an alarm is raised), and when someone is found in the water, we send out a helicopter? I don't know about the economics, but my guess is that the drone fleet is reasonable enough in comparison to having a load of helicopters sent out each time a mayday is heard.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I think the picosecond thing is a bit of a red herring. It seems physically impossible.
As for what value the HFT guys provide, the fact that they are fast is what allows them to be there making prices for you. You wouldn't be able to trade at those tight spreads, in those amounts, if the guys offering the prices were not confident they could dump the risk (often on another HFT). Just like the department store wouldn't offer you stuff at a low markup if they couldn't source it.
I don't see your point. They don't affect your transaction? They make it possible by being there to trade with you. And they are not doing nothing, they have the risk that the price moves against them.
The argument is so muddled, it's hard to see what it is. Most of these orderbook arguments on slashdot are oversimplified, and don't take into account real-world effects. They lean excessively on "ceteris paribus", where too many simplifying assumptions have been made. For instance, there's often no accounting for the extra orders that would exist in a more liquid market.
Well, one thing to note is that most of these HFTs are really just trading with each other, diversifying the risks they occasionally take on from outside participants. They are essentially doing what the old school market makers are doing, faster, and without the skulduggery (favoured friends in the pit, tip-offs for frontrunning, etc.)
They are better able to give tight prices when their leans (their get-outs) are quickly accessible. This is no different from when you phone a guy offering to buy a car. Suppose he's got another guy wanting to sell one, but he doesn't know if the guy is still firm, because he's uncontactable. So he offers you a wider margin, on the risk that he won't be able to source the car. Now, if the other guy happened to be on his mobile, and could be leaned on, your dealer (market maker) might give you a tighter spread. He's happy to make less money if the deals can be done often, and reliably. That's how liquidity and speed are related.
Some markets are currently doing this already, though I think they will be deciding to go to immediate dissemination soon.
They can issue more shares at the higher price.
I take it you've never bought anything from, say, a department store, or a supermarket? They are middle men as well, and in fact make their living by taking out a difference between the production price and your price...
Do you mean Bids/Asks? Puts and Calls are types of option. I'd hate to think the people who modded this up didn't know their arses from their elbows...
You want to make the market more fair, by going through LIVE brokers? Are you crazy? It's the living brokers who spend all day trying to rape their clients...
Why don't you just let people trade electronically, and they don't even need to talk to anyone?
Don't be retarded. Just because it's not officially a declaration of war doesn't mean it isn't a war. In fact, the US Congress has approved what is effectively a war on several occasions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States
How the heck does he get a tax bill for money he has to pay back?
This is a common way for people to communicate. Facebook is going to be "linked to" everything as long as this is a fact.
In other news:
Facebook is linked to 50% of parties. Facebook is linked to 80% of weddings. Facebook is linked to 100% of political. Facebook is linked to 65% of friendships. Facebook is linked to 90% of people liking stuff.
Don't forget poking.
It's not enough to find the Higgs and confirm the standard model. No, we must always be looking for strange new shit that violates the laws of physics as we know them. New particles, new types of matter, dark energy, broken symmetry, anything unusual. And if it can't be proven so much the better. Yes, I'm still waiting for them to realize that Keplers laws do not apply to galaxies, and the galactic rotation curve does not require dark matter to explain. Some of them also fail at application of the divergence theorem when it come to gravity (they basically assume any mass distribution can be treated as a point mass). Let's get the fundamentals right first before we run off looking for actual violations of the laws of physics please.
Well hey, there's still physical phenomena which are poorly understood. OTTOMH, sonoluminescence, turbulence.
Here's some more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics
Bull. Fucking. Shit. You haven't heard that. Ever. That's just your absolutely pathetic understanding of the "progressive" agenda.
It's probably not your fault though -- smart people with a lot of money have been painting progressives with that brush for a long time, and a lot of dupes have fallen for it.
--Jeremy
And of course it only goes one way...
Dude, this is a classic private equity move. And your guys Blackstone are one of the major players. Basically, they leverage the company, and pay themselves a dividend. Why do they do this? Well, it's not different from your pop mortgaging his hardware store, and paying himself a lump sum. In this case, it's a sale/leaseback, but it's completely the same. You get a lump sum in return paying a loan. The store is then burdened with a loan that needs to be paid off, which if it's a mom/pop shop will be stressful. So mom/pop won't do it. In your big corporation though, it's the employees that get stressed.
What about the Casino/Tax haven at the other end? Surely there would be interest in that?
Well, it's a compromise between only having one guy make a load of money on an idea, vs a whole bunch of people ripping it off and not making much. I don't have anything against people making lots of money, and 5M is just an example figure. And as I mentioned elsewhere, it's really just trying to think of some alternative to just having a single length of time.
Left, actually.
The smart people in society are those best able to make these tough judgments. Who do you trust: smart people or the uneducated? How many problems in America would be solved tomorrow by removing idiots from positions where they influence others?
There will be fewer idiots in the world when said idiots are practised in the skill of judging things for themselves, and suffering the consequences of their own decisions. Which they wont become if immodest geniuses are making all their decisions for them.
Further, I'm not looking forward to being ruled by the self-appointed aristocracy of the nerds.
Amen to that. Ironically, it takes a well educated person to string together a list of random facts/preconceptions into a compelling tale about why the world would be better if only we could see the world the same way as them. But the same clever people cannot deign to see the world through someone else's perspective. It always ends up being "don't you get it, you idiots? XYZ is a brilliant plan. I just need some power to implement it. Now bend over..."
I think the idea is more nanny-state than tyrant-state. They're trying to help people, in their own unhelpful way.
And Norway would never seriously propose that sort of law.
Are you telling us they don't regulate behaviour, which is what banning late night gaming is? Just because they don't have this particular rule doesn't mean they don't interfere in what ought to be people's own right to decide, which is the real issue. For instance, they have a rule about the composition of boards: you need a certain proportion of women. (Well, of each sex, but you know what that means.)
It seems to me that it's easier to figure out a good time limit than a monetary one.
Say, the $5M. Why precisely that number? How do you adapt to the economy? $5M in 10 years might be $1M today. Also some works are expensive. That would make big movies go out of copyright right in the first week.
Of course there's a million variations. How about we say 5M in profits? Then you're guaranteed to make money before your copyright expires. How about we inflation index the awards at the beginning, so the time value thing is less of a problem, but you still need to collect the money sooner rather than later? And instead of 5M specifically, we say when the IRR is x%? Etc, etc. Nothing's perfect.
The point is a specific length of time is a bit of a blunt instrument (in fact, rules are blunt instruments). If we want people to make money from creative works, but want to limit their power over derivative works, this is something we could think about.
Well, why make time the only parameter? If you're interested in new works related to something existing, how about you just say "when you've made 5M bucks off your book, it's off copyright"? That way hot topics can be written about in soon after they break, and many different authors might benefit in a short period of time. At the same time, people who've written niche stuff can continue to collect royalties for many years.
What about just having the drones based on land, flying around high-risk areas (possibly only when an alarm is raised), and when someone is found in the water, we send out a helicopter? I don't know about the economics, but my guess is that the drone fleet is reasonable enough in comparison to having a load of helicopters sent out each time a mayday is heard.