birdog1960

?you might disagree first and then produce some evidence to the contrary. i'd wager, i link to more data points to support my arguments here than any other poster. now disprove it.

yahoo finance isn't cnn. and while it's not the wsj, i'd wager the economic and educational demographics of those folks frequenting it our significantly higher than average. they're probably also largely unaware of an issues with Peaches.

it's just one of a mountain of schemes to grab .1 percent here. .25 percent there. 1% somewhere else. and much of the costs result in no value (or even decreased value) for the investor. that's where the outrage comes from. and there is outrage. read the comments below this article. they'd have the authors head on a pike if he were in friont og f them lecturing. but don't worry. the story isn't getting any traction.

the game is rigged for the financial industry to make huge profits. not so much for the aircrtaft manufacturers. yes, analysis and discernment of publicly available information has value. but not as much value as the financial institutions obtain from them. that is, unless they have information unavailable to everyone else or technology unavailable to anyone else or they control the rules of the game. they have all of those things making them very successful middlemen. they shouldn't.

silly me. i though publiclty traded meant publicly traded.

"charmed circle" from the slate article. i kinda like it. evokes another wordly dimension.

because we're not talking about building an airplane. we're talking about investing in equities. the actual process doesn't have to be unfair. why couldn't yahoo finance give real time quotes? what's stopping them? it's certainly not the technology. is it that someone in the elite circle doesn't want that to be so? that'd be my guess. it's inherently unfair . that's what your link said and it's true. furthermore it said it was silly to lead the public to believe that it might ever be fair. that's the disturbing part but unfortunately is probably also true. at least the process of buying securities doesn't need to be unfair. as far as inside information, doesn't anything that's not publicly available (even if requiring further analysis to become valuable) meet that description? do you believe the inside circle is void of such information generally? i don't.

he made many statements in the piece. do i need to agree with every single one to find it very good overall? that point wasn't material to his ultimate conclusiuon: that the street needs to improve its reputation and transparency. if anything, it's inconsistent with it. there's been plenty of press coverage in all the important places as i've pointed out. since only 10% of the population is deeply invested, one wouldn't expect "survivor" like ratings. there are probably very few crossover readers from "Flash Boys" reading headline stories on the "Daily Mirror". does that surprise you?

yet, he includes that comment in an article on this very subject.

from the article you cited: "Wall street insiders and those of us who knew about HFT already, have been generally underwhelmed by this observation because we've known that Wall Street code has always favored a small group of rich and well connected institutions who can afford to pay enormous sums of money to maintain their edge in the market. the advent of HFT just created new entrants into the charmed circle...". So that's it. Implicit in that statement is that a charmed circle must always exist. and HFT's are further tangible evidence. and that's where the uproar comes from. We've all known the dirty little secret as well. It just becomes more clarified evry time some revelation like this raises it's ugly little head.

read the slate article.

i think i can fathom it: if you think hft's suck, you should look at the past. it sucked worse. beating a 2.4% expense ratio isn't that difficult in theory. in practice it is because the rules are made and have previously been made by others than retail investors. and who are the retail investors? he rightly points out they make up less than 10% of the populace when looking at any meaningful amounts invested (and this is where the difference between that 10% and the .01% becomes even more dramatic). how many of those investors are stock pickers primarily? of that 10%, i'd estimate it's the minority. so the "smart" retail investors are utilizing investment companies like fidelity, t rowe price and vanguard except they too are being taken by the hft's and in some instances the expense ratios.. therefore, choose the lesser of evils and you get ripped off less. how bout devising a system where the retail investor doesn't get ripped off at all? well, that would eliminate billions for the financial industry to rake in just for existing. and since it runs the show and makes the rules, that would be unthinkable. kinda like taking private insurance out of health care. he's right. the way to riches is still the hedge fund. and that speaks volumes about the current and past state of affairs on "the street". as salmon states, as far as intermediaries, "everybody is in on the game". that's true as long as you aren't the retail investors. we are the game. yes. sort of like slate. i

c'mon. bloomberg, forbes, yahoo, finance, nbc,cbs, cnbc, abc, pbs, npr and even fox business news did major stories on this. many (including fox business news) even delved into the deeper implications: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/04/01/60-minutes-stopped-short-unveiling-unspoken-problem-high-frequency-trading/. i have to admit, this is one of the more profound analyses that i've read.

these borderline unethical tactics are emblematic of the current trend towards massive wealth inequality. it's certainly been true that "money follows money" for most of history but we are approaching or have entered record levels and it's being accomplished in many cases by unsavory and sometimes outright deceptive practices that seems to be accepted behavior by many just as long as you don't get caught. even then it's rationalized as being good somehow. and it's almost never seriously punished.

holy ignorant interpretation....i'll leave you to seach out the meaning of "symptom" in this context on your own.

who said anything about old money? it's concentration of money that's at issue. ATD sold for 700mm. i'm guessing the founder is in the .01%. most likely all on the list are. and they were likely financed by others already in that group. and this concentration has all materialized from gaming an already corrupt system. i'm not claiming it's the root of the problem but it's certainly a symptom and folks like you see it as ok. i don't.

nope. it was in response to jauronimo's criticism. it has everything to do with that.

how many regular folks have 20 million to gamble on hyperdrive data lines? who is funding that type of investment?

you need a subset analysis to comprehend the point: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101540240. yes, institutional traders are sympathetic parties. they largely represent the cumulative investments of regular people. many of the jobs in the tiny group where massive wealth concentration is occurring are in the financial sector.

there's enough consequence that traders are spending 20 mm or so at a pop to win that millisecond race through better technology. when this story broke, the canadian that discovered it was asked to consult for many of the big name brokerage firms (eg t rowe price, vanguard, fidelity etc) and most have acted on his recommendations. that should tell you something about the scope of the problem. we're not talking about only individual investors (who were surely hurt) but also institutional investors. there's a great deal of money at stake here. what does $2 billlion for institutional investors in australia extrpolate to in the us exchanges? http://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/highspeed-trading-costs-investors-2b-say-industry-super-funds-20140407-367cz.html

my charges are that the market is an extremelyunlevel playing field. it should be much more level and trustworthy. a few insiders possess great advantages that lead to even greater returns that cumulatively add to the ever increasing wealth concentration at the very top. in effect, the robber barons are back to their old tricks and are probably as or more efficient than they've ever been. i'll leave it to experts to remedy the situation but the iex seems a reasonable starting point. and no, the experts should not include anyone with a dog in the hunt.

does that in some way diminish the importance of the book.? of the trader that made public the scam? a story this big and your immediate concern is the writer's motivation?

that's reassuring....you'll have to forgive the rest of us if we don't trust the foxes to guard the henhouse given the last few decades in history.

read lewis' own words here: http://www.npr.org/2014/04/01/297686724/on-a-rigged-wall-street-milliseconds-make-all-the-difference. the canadian discovering this has an equally interesting take. this is front running, plain and simple. it amounts to a tax on every outside investor for virtually every trade. and a proposed solution is to let the industry regulate itself? i don't think so.

um hmmm.... after they we're caught. seems this was all common knowledge to many in the industry.