Reaction to Michael Lewis's book and "60 Minutes" interview

+1 StarDust9182

2 or even one exchange can handle the ALL STOCK volume just fine(only if they choose to do so and willing to invest into infrastructure). what puzzle me once again is that exchanges doesn't really care about volume or IPO. cause there is not much of IPO anymore(not so business friendly environment in US lately(last 10 ! years)) and cause they are now in business of selling all sort of data and order flow.
they aren't really exchanges anymore to make this short and straight.US stock(and SEC) market lost it's course long time ago,funded and lobbied by WS. plain and simple.
 
Volume drops because arbitrage is self-limiting in a free market system. Volatility drops because that is what they basically trade - each other. So the HFT arms race destroys the integrity of the market since they will not stop a severe market fall, they will turn off their systems. It is fake liquidity - liquidity when the market doesn't need it and none when it does need it. (A HFT is a fellow who lends you his liquidity umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain. - market twain) In the previous days, the market makers/specialists actually supplied a service. Not anymore IMO.

short memeory -crash of 1987 MM did not pick up phones and there are more examples - it was no different trust me (except spreads and commissions)
 
short memeory -crash of 1987 MM did not pick up phones and there are more examples - it was no different trust me (except spreads and commissions)

I have a great memory of 1987.

In 1987, I was just starting out learning and held a single Bond Fund as luck would have it. It went up almost 4 times in one day if I recall and I tried to get through to my broker who didn't return my calls until a few days later. When he got back to me, he basically said that he was sorry but that he was busy with his clients ( not me I guess). How many times in history will bonds go up that much? Yet I couldn't sell even though I knew to lock in those gains.

I have lots of examples of how brokers just made me broker. The reason I still trade today is that I have yet to find one honest enough and that will look after me properly over their own interests. I am sure that there are some but at the time I was not big enough size. Now I am and I reject them.

Today I would not lose that much money in one day.
 
is he wrong? i think this statement above is spot on.
why do we need 60-70 ECN's + basically unregulated dark pools? what kind of infrastructure is that,where SEC themselves admit that they can't track or even properly oversee all this mess.

finally light is up in somebody's head..

Dark markets may be more harmful than high-frequency trading

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/dark-markets-may-more-harmful-044748628.html


Around 40 percent of all U.S. stock trades, including almost all orders from "mom and pop" investors, now happen "off exchange," up from around 16 percent six years ago.

Around 45 dark pools and as many as 200 internalizers compete with 13 public exchanges in the U.S.

trading same exact 2000 or so stocks..why do we need all this? cause volume is 'too heavy'? really? i don't know the details of how NOW trades are counted,but i suspect that the actual volume is far far lower than it's really is. and it a far cry from where it was 5-10 years ago.
 
this is worth checking out, around minute 16 Naroj talks about direct feed vs consolidated
feed, assuming there is an edge in the direct feed, can anyone comment on how the SIP
feed could/should be fixed updated. I saw one other poster mention this.

http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2014-04-02/katsuyama-narang-lewis-debate-speed-trading

This is getting comical. Here is a related followup story:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-07/1215095-flash-boys-mystery-solved

From that story:
"With that Tradeworx – Thesys – Manoj – Midas – NASDAQ context, watch Narang tell Bloomberg Television that speed matters less in today’s markets than it ever has in the history of markets. (15:35 in). So says the man selling speed to the SEC (the American taxpayer), HFTs, and Stock Exchanges. You can’t make this stuff up. It would be humorous if it were not so sad."

Have regulatory agencies been captured somehow by lobbists and that this the true reason nothing has been done about HFT? Certainly it is odd that both high profile interviews against Lewis have ended up with strange twists. Can't they find someone to come on and debate Lewis that doesn't have HFT baggage?

Llyod Blankfein was grilled about the housing crash, so perhaps it is time for the HFT firms to further explain their market efficiencies to congress. Llyod could sit in the audience and gasp with the gallery this time. Perhaps he should bring his lawyers with him?

I look forward to house of cards season 4 based on this comedy.
 
give me a break..volume is lower and lower every single day. go head and compare today volume on most liquid etf's (QQQ,IWM,SPY,liquid stocks etc) with volume 5-7-10(!) years ago..tell you more-good chunk of today's volume is just phantom,prearranged trades away from market etc..NOT REAL
==============
Good points,Bob, on QQQ lower volume;
probably because its a good %% gainer, but :wild + wilder swings , for an index related .....I did NOT like it when they changed the name to QQQQ; but @ least they did a redo
to QQQ,LOL

SPY volume has for sure increased over the past years;
benchmark..... havent sudied IWM lately, too many traders in that one for me,:D
 
IBD dos show SPY volume trending down a bit on 3year, , weekly candles[50 week moving average, volume].BUT SPY volume has trended up from 2000 bear market.QQQ has NOT:cool:
 
==============
Good points,Bob, on QQQ lower volume;
probably because its a good %% gainer, but :wild + wilder swings , for an index related .....I did NOT like it when they changed the name to QQQQ; but @ least they did a redo
to QQQ,LOL

SPY volume has for sure increased over the past years;
benchmark..... havent sudied IWM lately, too many traders in that one for me,:D


no need to study,cause i still remember how it was with IWM back in a day(cause i've used it often as a hedge)-avg. premarket volume on IWM use to be at 2-4M shares traded before market open. on day with major economic news out at 8:30- up to 10 M been traded before market open. yes, as much as 10M shares. now-150-300K on day w/o news. 500K on day with major news before market open. and most of the time it's opens flat now. why? cause nobody trade s** anymore in premarket. it could be good news for SOME participants,cause some good moves might occur right after open,but- for the rest of us-it's clearly demonstrates lack of participants,traders.
so-i'm not buying 'heavy volume,impossible to handle by only 2 exchanges ' argument. and as i said-i'm not sure how current volume is calculated and how many trades are actually THE TRADES, where 2 different market participants are exchanging their shares. think about-they report everything now to the tape. small, odd lot trades..everything. i place 'smart' order to buy IWM-IB sold me from their inventory-is that really a trade? i mean-the order now have to change so many hands,so many middle man and i'm not sure how and what been reported. but as i said-i expect that at least half of those reported trades are same s**,that just been reported over and over. (again-i'm talking about US stocks) and that creates an illusion of 'heavy volume'. purposely. just as a bunch of Chinese companies,numerous ETF's,ETN's on both NYSE and NASDAQ create an appearance that the markets (and US economy)are fine and there is a plenty of tickers(suppose to be a companies) to trade. but when you start counting actual US based companies-the picture would be different. and i've said it many times here. they(US companies,based,located in US and traded on US public exchanges) are in constant decline,w\o single uptick in decade or so. recovery my a**
 
Back
Top