Mate, religious people are nutcases. It's not bigotry. Bigotry is hating someone because of the colour of their skin, or their race, or their hair colour.
People are ALLOWED to dislike people because of what they believe. Because the belief is not a fixed thing, it could easily be changed.
Belief isn't that easy to change. For instance, have you ever tried believing in God? I've tried and failed. My existing framework is simply too anti-religious to allow the thought. Perhaps if some evidence came along, it would be a different story, but that's different from just changing your mind.
Also, they're not all nutcases. (Some of them are very pleasant, too.) Everyone has unfounded beliefs. They're only dangerous once they start pushing those unfounded beliefs into unfounded decisions that other people have to follow, and many of them realise they can't convince everyone else to follow their system.
There's several examples of manual labor jobs that aren't automated. Hairdressing, office cleaners, anything that's local and non-tradeable.
And while I agree not everyone likes analytical/creative jobs, there's a lot of things out there. I don't see how technology is the problem. And if it is, what can you do about it? If someone invents a better widget, someone else will buy it and use it.
Your calculation isn't quite right. The unemployment rate in most countries is the number of people who've looked for a job, but can't find one. It isn't just 19 people supporting each unemployed. There's children, people in education, pensioners, and disabled to care for as well. Also, consider that your population curve may shift depending on the number of people born each year (and maturing, and retiring, etc), so that the dependency ratio will change.
Interesting article. But monopolies have come into existence from time to time. Should we just let them be (ie assume it's fine for consumers to just have that one provider)?
Anything and everything can be argued to be "essential"... where's my free food, free water, free house? What remains of the argument is simply an appeal to tradition.
Well, yes. Like I said, what you consider essential depends on what choices your society makes. Some societies have indeed decided to provide free food, water and houses. Not ones I thought were great, but I didn't choose for them to be that way.
I agree. The free market works well for most stuff, but certain things, not so well. How to tell them apart: imagine whatever service you're discussing breaking down, for instance through the bankruptcy of a private provider. Is it thinkable that the government would not have to step in and provide it? Yes: Go private. No? Go public.
So, suppose you have an electricity grid. Will people be content with blackouts? I doubt it. Suppose you have a toy manufacturer. That seems like something for private firms to do. Banks? Apparently, we don't really want the big banks to fail. So we'll have to regulate.
Note your public/private (or regulated/unregulated) depends on your tolerance for breakdown. Some people (and countries) care a lot that healthcare works, for instance.
If we lived in a proper meritocracy, if would be really frustrating for most people. You'd know for a fact that people above you in the pecking order DESERVE to be there...
First of all, when I went, it was about 1000 GBP a year in tuition, and maybe another 2K for living expenses. Terms were 3x 8weeks, very brief compared to others. I studied engineering, economics and management. Now I work in finance, having started a firm a couple of years ago.
Benefits: - The main benefit of going to Oxford seems to be that everyone thinks I'm smarter than I actually am. I'm sure if I'd paid to go to Harvard, it would be much the same. That opens doors in every industry you can imagine, even ones that don't require smart people, like finance. - Certain jobs in the financial sector have a hugely disproportionate number of Oxbridge grads. If you don't have a degree from a top uni, they can find someone who does. (It won't help you do the job however) - If you hadn't gone to what the British call "Public School" (and the rest of the world calls "Private School"), Oxbridge is a great place to instill you with an overinflated ego, a sense of entitlement, and the attendant confidence in oneself that comes with these. You'll need it for bluffing the interviewers. - You will run into some people whom you respect intellectually, and academically. I hired the only guy I've ever called a genius (and actually met!) for my firm. However, if you think contacts are the way to go, I'd suggest you won't meet enough of the truly bright, creative types, and too many of the impostors.
Drawbacks/Non-benefits: - You're not really learning anything that can't be found in a book somewhere. So any college, at any price, will be able to give you the same reading list. If you think tutorials set Oxbridge apart from the rest, maybe you have a point. But you can get the same arguments from the same guy, in his book, instead of making him shout it at you. - You feel like you HAVE to at least give finance/consulting/legal a chance. Everyone else is doing it, so maybe if you follow the sheep, you can be ahead of everyone. I have a mate who calls it "Academic Momentum". You just do what everyone else who is a high achiever is doing, and so you end up designing derivatives instead of medicines/rockets/F1 cars/other cool stuff. - The more decorated an academic is, the less capable he is as a teacher. I found the best teachers were the grad students who'd recently wondered the same things as me about why XYZ was the way it was. Top profs have stuff so well ingrained, they can't fathom how someone can't fathom how a transistor works. - As mentioned, contacts aren't that useful for your future life. People won't let you leech off them. Also, the "hub" contacts, those special people who really do know everyone useful, they already have their networks established by the time they get to uni. You're unlikely to pick up a lordship while in uni, so don't spend too much time trying to meet these guys. If you do happen to be mates with them though, it's not a bad thing, and they're not bad guys. - Stuff you learn at uni isn't useful for work. It really isn't. I remember starting to program when I was on my first job, thinking "why the heck do I not see anything from that C++ module?". (Answer: you needed to know how derivatives work. And it was VB!) - I'd also like to take this opportunity to warn people away from doing an MBA. You won't learn how to run a business without running a business. You won't even learn how finance works. You'll be expensive to hire, and in debt. The only benefit is an MBA says "I'm so friggin hungry for this M&A job, I've got this huge debt that I need to pay. Please make me work 100hr weeks."
I think the idea is that the judge tries to make sure they know what they need to know. Any extra reading might throw the jurors' understanding off what the judge thinks is right.
Of course this doesn't mean you can't be misinformed BEFORE the trial starts...
I'm writing about a hypothetical computer, explaining why it wouldn't work. So in that sense I suppose we're in agreement.
I'm not sure about healthcare since I don't follow US stuff that deeply, but I don't see how you can make such sweeping statements about what's gonna happen in the next 5 years.
Looking through your example, you were buying the touch as well as the 3 offers behind. You were paying up when the market was 10.35best, all the way to 10.50, ie you're moving the market 15 ticks.
If, as you say, the market was inundated with orders, your 10.50 limit WOULD be the touch. OR you would have done your whole 10K at 10.35. You would have lost less vs mark-to-market.
BTW, what you've written is not an explanation of what to do as an HFT, and it certainly does not demonstrate how it is risk free.
There's a simple explanation for your 1/2 question.
The HFTs are making more money, because there's more other guys trading, because the other guys want to trade more when the spreads are tight. Ie it's not a zero-sum game.
Also, not all the HFTs make money. I did ask someone here how it could be that easy to make money, ofc with no answer.
So, yes, the middle man makes money. Money that one imagines could have gone straight from A to Z. But A and Z are not present at the same time. You either gotta pay a broker to get them together, or you go to a risk-taker who guesses that buying from A and selling to Z will leave him a profit.
Well, I've been writing enough about this topic now, and I don't know how I can convince people that HFT is a good thing. This is from the vantage point of someone who ISN'T an HFT, but trades in the market, and finds their presence beneficial.
I'll address one thing at a time, and hope some out there understands...
Timescales... Yes, there are natural timescales for doing certain things, like consuming food. So a food buyer might not come along all that often. But the people who are selling it, the market makers, make a living by being present all the time. That's the whole benefit they're providing. Need some shares? They're available immediately. Now, when an external guy (a producer/consumer) comes along, the MM doesn't get told whether they're buying or selling (their broker is meant to anonymize the relationship), but he does have to make a two-way price he's comfortable with. So the producer comes in, sells a load of stuff to the MM. The MM is trading his own money, and basically needs to sell the big load of stuff at a higher price to make a living. But he's just been told (by the sell order) that there's more supply than demand. In effect, he's going need to wait around a bit with the stuff on his books, and try to scalp a few ticks to some other guy. Maybe another MM, maybe a speculator, whatever. The next guy in the market that gets some of these contracts is stuck with the same problem. And so we need to be able to trade. If the MMs didn't know they could dump the contracts on other MMs, their bid/asks offered to the client would be bigger. Make a way for them to communicate with each other fast, and suddenly they're more confident. And the end-user benefits.
BTW, it does say in bold that investment/speculation cannot be distinguished.
Well, you're right about the implicit hedge. That shouldn't be there.
The thing is, you're wrong about the customer getting a worse price. Sure, sometimes the bank will front-run the customer (there's crooks in every market), but even if you're getting a worse price vs the immediate touch, you're getting a better price than if volumes were significantly lower. Basically, thin markets mean there's no offers behind, and you can't get your order filled.
Regarding your "false experiment" thing, you're suggesting that because there's no market, it isn't a comparison. One might think this to be a reasonable point, but you ignore the information presented. People lose from a wider spread. Any trading would have created a tighter spread. Fast trading has shown spreads to be even tighter. Simple.
I thought the whole concept of trading was based on division of labor/skills and geographic distribution of people. For example, the baker trades bread to the blacksmith in exchange for his work because although the blacksmith could bake his own bread, and the baker could do his own blacksmithing, it's inefficient in a number of different ways. Then, of course there's the trader who trades wool from the highlands for fish from the fishing village. For all we know, the fisherman may be a retired shepherd and has all the same "information" (job skills) as whoever produced the wool, but he can't simultaneously be a fisherman and a shepherd so, lucky for him, he can trade. The asymmetric information thing is a crock. Trading with "asymmetric information" is just a euphemism for cheating people. That's why insider trading is a crime. Everyone in the market is supposed to have access to the same information. If you can't understand how anyone could then make money in the stock market, then you must not understand that the purpose of the stock market is to provide capital to businesses, which will then hopefully use the capital wisely to generate profits. The purpose of the stock market is not to be a big gambling parlor where most people are speculating wildly hoping to make money off the other suckers who are speculating wildly while a smaller group of sharks swindle the suckers out of their money.
All the professions you mentioned are speculators. The baker guesses that producing more bread than he himself can eat will allow him to swap some of the bread with the blacksmith, who similarly guesses that making a load of horseshoes (more than he needs) is profitable. The shepherd in the highlands guesses that he's better off swapping for the fish than fishing, etc.
The market is there to trade uncertainty. How much bread should be made? How many horseshoes?
Information is asymmetric, because each guy in your economy knows most about his own produce. That's not to say that some improprieties don't happen (insider trading), but you can't stop some people from knowing more than others.
As for the purpose of the market, if someone doesn't provide prices, none of these guys would be trading with each other. They'd all be bartering. The market makers don't even ask for an upfront payment. They give you a two-way price, knowing that if you've got a huge pile of bread, they'll be screwed trying to get rid of it.
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Mate, religious people are nutcases. It's not bigotry. Bigotry is hating someone because of the colour of their skin, or their race, or their hair colour.
People are ALLOWED to dislike people because of what they believe. Because the belief is not a fixed thing, it could easily be changed.
Belief isn't that easy to change. For instance, have you ever tried believing in God? I've tried and failed. My existing framework is simply too anti-religious to allow the thought. Perhaps if some evidence came along, it would be a different story, but that's different from just changing your mind.
Also, they're not all nutcases. (Some of them are very pleasant, too.) Everyone has unfounded beliefs. They're only dangerous once they start pushing those unfounded beliefs into unfounded decisions that other people have to follow, and many of them realise they can't convince everyone else to follow their system.
There's several examples of manual labor jobs that aren't automated. Hairdressing, office cleaners, anything that's local and non-tradeable.
And while I agree not everyone likes analytical/creative jobs, there's a lot of things out there. I don't see how technology is the problem. And if it is, what can you do about it? If someone invents a better widget, someone else will buy it and use it.
For your discussion to happen, we need evidence.
My point is it's hard to get any research done on certain subjects, because researchers are expected to come to certain conclusions.
Telling researchers to change jobs isn't going to help the facts come out.
Seriously?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite_fallacy
Your calculation isn't quite right. The unemployment rate in most countries is the number of people who've looked for a job, but can't find one. It isn't just 19 people supporting each unemployed. There's children, people in education, pensioners, and disabled to care for as well. Also, consider that your population curve may shift depending on the number of people born each year (and maturing, and retiring, etc), so that the dependency ratio will change.
Can I ask which country you're talking about?
They can't pee standing up. Unless they buy one of those weird tubes.
PC-ness also governs who gets a research grant and tenure. So it's not as simple as "just say it anyway."
This actually makes sense, and explains why typing speed doesn't cause good programming, but there might still be a correlation.
Is this really how people debate on the internet these days? Why sprinkle an otherwise reasonable rebuttal with loads of insults?
Interesting article. But monopolies have come into existence from time to time. Should we just let them be (ie assume it's fine for consumers to just have that one provider)?
Anything and everything can be argued to be "essential"... where's my free food, free water, free house?
What remains of the argument is simply an appeal to tradition.
Well, yes. Like I said, what you consider essential depends on what choices your society makes. Some societies have indeed decided to provide free food, water and houses. Not ones I thought were great, but I didn't choose for them to be that way.
I agree. The free market works well for most stuff, but certain things, not so well. How to tell them apart: imagine whatever service you're discussing breaking down, for instance through the bankruptcy of a private provider. Is it thinkable that the government would not have to step in and provide it? Yes: Go private. No? Go public.
So, suppose you have an electricity grid. Will people be content with blackouts? I doubt it.
Suppose you have a toy manufacturer. That seems like something for private firms to do.
Banks? Apparently, we don't really want the big banks to fail. So we'll have to regulate.
Note your public/private (or regulated/unregulated) depends on your tolerance for breakdown. Some people (and countries) care a lot that healthcare works, for instance.
If we lived in a proper meritocracy, if would be really frustrating for most people. You'd know for a fact that people above you in the pecking order DESERVE to be there...
Let's keep the cat in the bag...
You can go to another country, thus avoiding the taxes.
I don't mean to be rude, but isn't moving around an opportunity to meet lots of people, and thus develop your relationship skills?
First of all, when I went, it was about 1000 GBP a year in tuition, and maybe another 2K for living expenses. Terms were 3x 8weeks, very brief compared to others. I studied engineering, economics and management. Now I work in finance, having started a firm a couple of years ago.
Benefits:
- The main benefit of going to Oxford seems to be that everyone thinks I'm smarter than I actually am. I'm sure if I'd paid to go to Harvard, it would be much the same. That opens doors in every industry you can imagine, even ones that don't require smart people, like finance.
- Certain jobs in the financial sector have a hugely disproportionate number of Oxbridge grads. If you don't have a degree from a top uni, they can find someone who does. (It won't help you do the job however)
- If you hadn't gone to what the British call "Public School" (and the rest of the world calls "Private School"), Oxbridge is a great place to instill you with an overinflated ego, a sense of entitlement, and the attendant confidence in oneself that comes with these. You'll need it for bluffing the interviewers.
- You will run into some people whom you respect intellectually, and academically. I hired the only guy I've ever called a genius (and actually met!) for my firm. However, if you think contacts are the way to go, I'd suggest you won't meet enough of the truly bright, creative types, and too many of the impostors.
Drawbacks/Non-benefits:
- You're not really learning anything that can't be found in a book somewhere. So any college, at any price, will be able to give you the same reading list. If you think tutorials set Oxbridge apart from the rest, maybe you have a point. But you can get the same arguments from the same guy, in his book, instead of making him shout it at you.
- You feel like you HAVE to at least give finance/consulting/legal a chance. Everyone else is doing it, so maybe if you follow the sheep, you can be ahead of everyone. I have a mate who calls it "Academic Momentum". You just do what everyone else who is a high achiever is doing, and so you end up designing derivatives instead of medicines/rockets/F1 cars/other cool stuff.
- The more decorated an academic is, the less capable he is as a teacher. I found the best teachers were the grad students who'd recently wondered the same things as me about why XYZ was the way it was. Top profs have stuff so well ingrained, they can't fathom how someone can't fathom how a transistor works.
- As mentioned, contacts aren't that useful for your future life. People won't let you leech off them. Also, the "hub" contacts, those special people who really do know everyone useful, they already have their networks established by the time they get to uni. You're unlikely to pick up a lordship while in uni, so don't spend too much time trying to meet these guys. If you do happen to be mates with them though, it's not a bad thing, and they're not bad guys.
- Stuff you learn at uni isn't useful for work. It really isn't. I remember starting to program when I was on my first job, thinking "why the heck do I not see anything from that C++ module?". (Answer: you needed to know how derivatives work. And it was VB!)
- I'd also like to take this opportunity to warn people away from doing an MBA. You won't learn how to run a business without running a business. You won't even learn how finance works. You'll be expensive to hire, and in debt. The only benefit is an MBA says "I'm so friggin hungry for this M&A job, I've got this huge debt that I need to pay. Please make me work 100hr weeks."
This just illustrates the point that skills are learned at work, not at university.
Can someone shed light on whether they can actually control the internet, on a technical level?
I think the idea is that the judge tries to make sure they know what they need to know. Any extra reading might throw the jurors' understanding off what the judge thinks is right.
Of course this doesn't mean you can't be misinformed BEFORE the trial starts...
I'm writing about a hypothetical computer, explaining why it wouldn't work. So in that sense I suppose we're in agreement.
I'm not sure about healthcare since I don't follow US stuff that deeply, but I don't see how you can make such sweeping statements about what's gonna happen in the next 5 years.
Looking through your example, you were buying the touch as well as the 3 offers behind. You were paying up when the market was 10.35best, all the way to 10.50, ie you're moving the market 15 ticks.
If, as you say, the market was inundated with orders, your 10.50 limit WOULD be the touch. OR you would have done your whole 10K at 10.35. You would have lost less vs mark-to-market.
BTW, what you've written is not an explanation of what to do as an HFT, and it certainly does not demonstrate how it is risk free.
There's a simple explanation for your 1/2 question.
The HFTs are making more money, because there's more other guys trading, because the other guys want to trade more when the spreads are tight. Ie it's not a zero-sum game.
Also, not all the HFTs make money. I did ask someone here how it could be that easy to make money, ofc with no answer.
So, yes, the middle man makes money. Money that one imagines could have gone straight from A to Z. But A and Z are not present at the same time. You either gotta pay a broker to get them together, or you go to a risk-taker who guesses that buying from A and selling to Z will leave him a profit.
Well, I've been writing enough about this topic now, and I don't know how I can convince people that HFT is a good thing. This is from the vantage point of someone who ISN'T an HFT, but trades in the market, and finds their presence beneficial.
I'll address one thing at a time, and hope some out there understands...
Timescales... Yes, there are natural timescales for doing certain things, like consuming food. So a food buyer might not come along all that often. But the people who are selling it, the market makers, make a living by being present all the time. That's the whole benefit they're providing. Need some shares? They're available immediately. Now, when an external guy (a producer/consumer) comes along, the MM doesn't get told whether they're buying or selling (their broker is meant to anonymize the relationship), but he does have to make a two-way price he's comfortable with. So the producer comes in, sells a load of stuff to the MM. The MM is trading his own money, and basically needs to sell the big load of stuff at a higher price to make a living. But he's just been told (by the sell order) that there's more supply than demand. In effect, he's going need to wait around a bit with the stuff on his books, and try to scalp a few ticks to some other guy. Maybe another MM, maybe a speculator, whatever. The next guy in the market that gets some of these contracts is stuck with the same problem. And so we need to be able to trade. If the MMs didn't know they could dump the contracts on other MMs, their bid/asks offered to the client would be bigger. Make a way for them to communicate with each other fast, and suddenly they're more confident. And the end-user benefits.
BTW, it does say in bold that investment/speculation cannot be distinguished.
Well, you're right about the implicit hedge. That shouldn't be there.
The thing is, you're wrong about the customer getting a worse price. Sure, sometimes the bank will front-run the customer (there's crooks in every market), but even if you're getting a worse price vs the immediate touch, you're getting a better price than if volumes were significantly lower. Basically, thin markets mean there's no offers behind, and you can't get your order filled.
Regarding your "false experiment" thing, you're suggesting that because there's no market, it isn't a comparison. One might think this to be a reasonable point, but you ignore the information presented. People lose from a wider spread. Any trading would have created a tighter spread. Fast trading has shown spreads to be even tighter. Simple.
I thought the whole concept of trading was based on division of labor/skills and geographic distribution of people. For example, the baker trades bread to the blacksmith in exchange for his work because although the blacksmith could bake his own bread, and the baker could do his own blacksmithing, it's inefficient in a number of different ways. Then, of course there's the trader who trades wool from the highlands for fish from the fishing village. For all we know, the fisherman may be a retired shepherd and has all the same "information" (job skills) as whoever produced the wool, but he can't simultaneously be a fisherman and a shepherd so, lucky for him, he can trade. The asymmetric information thing is a crock. Trading with "asymmetric information" is just a euphemism for cheating people. That's why insider trading is a crime. Everyone in the market is supposed to have access to the same information. If you can't understand how anyone could then make money in the stock market, then you must not understand that the purpose of the stock market is to provide capital to businesses, which will then hopefully use the capital wisely to generate profits. The purpose of the stock market is not to be a big gambling parlor where most people are speculating wildly hoping to make money off the other suckers who are speculating wildly while a smaller group of sharks swindle the suckers out of their money.
All the professions you mentioned are speculators. The baker guesses that producing more bread than he himself can eat will allow him to swap some of the bread with the blacksmith, who similarly guesses that making a load of horseshoes (more than he needs) is profitable. The shepherd in the highlands guesses that he's better off swapping for the fish than fishing, etc.
The market is there to trade uncertainty. How much bread should be made? How many horseshoes?
Information is asymmetric, because each guy in your economy knows most about his own produce. That's not to say that some improprieties don't happen (insider trading), but you can't stop some people from knowing more than others.
As for the purpose of the market, if someone doesn't provide prices, none of these guys would be trading with each other. They'd all be bartering. The market makers don't even ask for an upfront payment. They give you a two-way price, knowing that if you've got a huge pile of bread, they'll be screwed trying to get rid of it.