Nanosecond Trading Could Make Markets Go Haywire
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/high-speed-trading/
Man, there is money to be made here! Of course, it is very expensive to get sub millisecond access, let alone programming analysis algorithms that can make decisions in this time frame, but what a payoff! I bet you could analyze the current algorithms simply by looking at how they react and then once enough information has been gleaned you could then give a small push in one direction and cause the market to respond in an amplified fashion and make a huge mint in the process. Since there are no humans involved at that level, presuming you are a smart enough programmer, this would be like having a legal printing press in your basement churning out bucks.
Of course, the smart thing to do would be to eliminate trading at this speed (it is inherently unfair anyway, since getting that sort of access is nearly impossible for ordinary people), but since our entire government is totally corrupted by the monied special interests I don’t see any practical way to avoid this sort of thing. Thus, if it were possible to find appropriate investors who could pony up the bucks to buy the high speed access and the ultra-fast hardware necessary to make decisions at that speed, success might actually change the market’s minds about the regulations.
That would be such a cool job I might relocate to NY just to take part in it!
