MARKET CENTER INDUCEMENTS FOR HIGH FREQUENCY TRADERS
Most high frequency trading strategies are effective because they can take advantage of three major inducements offered by the market centers and not typically accessible to retail or institutional investors.
1.
Rebate traders trade for free. Because they are considered to be adding liquidity, exchanges and ECNs cover their commission costs and exchange fees. This makes it worthwhile for rebate traders to buy and sell shares at the same price, in order to generate their ¼ penny per share liquidity rebate on each trade. Exchanges and ECNs view the order maker as a loss leader in order to attract the order taker. In addition, the more volume at different prices, even if that means moving back and forth a penny, the more money the market center makes from tape revenue. Tape revenue is generated by exchanges and ECNs from the sale of data to third party vendors, such as Bloomberg for professional investors, and Yahoo for retail investors.
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2.
Automated market makers co-locate their servers in the NASDAQ or the NYSE building, right next to the exchangesâ servers. AMMs already have faster servers than most institutional and retail investors. But because they are co-located, their servers can react even faster. Thatâs how AMMs are can issue IOC orders â immediate or cancel â sometimes known as âcancel and replace.â They issue the order immediately, and if nothing is there, it is canceled. And thatâs how AMMs get the trades faster than any other investor, even though AMMs are offering the same price. AMMs pay large fees to the exchanges to co-locate, but it obviously has a decent return on investment. According to Traders Magazine, the number of firms that co-locate at NASDAQ has doubled over the last year.
3.
People often wonder whether it is fair or legal for program traders to move the market the way they do. Everybody forgets, however, that in October 2007, just a little more than a year ago, the NYSE very publicly removed curbs that shut down program trading if the market moved more than 2% in any direction. The NYSE said it was making the change because âit does not appear that the approach to market volatility envisioned by the use of these âcollarsâ is as meaningful today as when the Rule was formalized in the late 1980s.â On a more commercial level, the NYSE had been at a competitive disadvantage because other market centers that didnât have curbs were getting the program trading business.