Author Michael Lewis is best known for uncovering hidden corners of our present, whether in baseball (Moneyball), the financial collapse (The Big Short), or high frequency trading (this month’s Flash Boys). But in the September 26th, 1996 issue of the New York Times Magazine, Lewis took a swing at predicting the future.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman vowed today to crack down on the technology that gives high frequency traders an unfair advantage in the market. And that’s a very good thing for regular humans with money in the marketplace.
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A week ago, the Federal Reserve announced something or another about bonds, a move that sent the bond market into a frenzied orgy of bond loading and unloading. So what, right? The markets quiver whenever the Fed does anything. Well, weirdly, it appears the information got out five milliseconds early. Which wouldn’t matter, except that those tiny fractions of seconds are a lifetime to the high-speed trading computers that run our markets.
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Honestly, it shouldn’t come as any shock: the microblogging service that made it perfectly acceptable to deliver huge, huge news in 140 characters or less has just done precisely that. Twitter has announced that it has “confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO,” but details beyond that are being kept under wraps. What’s it mean? Those with equity in the company are about to become mind-numbingly rich; Wall Street is about to lose its gourd about getting in early; and end-users like yourself should start worrying about ads, ads everywhere.
Filed under: Internet
Source: Twitter
You know, it makes sense: an app for the one percent, tailor-made for a $1,500 headset. Fidelity’s Market Monitor app for Google Glass might just be the most impressive program to debut for the device, particularly considering the class of individual who would take advantage. In the trading world, missing an alert or notification by even three seconds could be the difference between million and millions, with this app enabling Fidelity customers to request real-time stock quotes and receive alerts dealing with companies in their portfolio. In a concept video describing what’s possible (embedded just after the break), we even see a wearer snap a photo of a Google logo, and the app translates the photo into a stock quote for GOOG.
We’re guessing that it’s only a matter of time before every other financial institution follows suit, which will likely lead to each and every CNBC anchor wearing a set whilst on air. Also, we’re hearing from a “reliable source” that both Michael Douglas and Shia LaBeouf will be joined by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Wall Street: Glass on Glass on Glass.
Source: Fidelity Labs (1), (2)
In this episode of “What could possibly go wrong?!“, allow us to introduce you to DCM Dealer. Billed as an “online trading platform,” this here project was whipped up by the same London-based investment outfit (DCM Capital) that went belly-up after losing some $40 million in assets in just one month during the summer of 2011. Granted, that was a pretty tough time in the market, and it did manage to squeeze out a 1.9 percent gain in the period it was open, but it’s still worth keeping in mind. Now, the firm is hoping to catch a second wind with a tool that mines Twitter, Facebook, and the whole of social media in order to pick up clues about the public’s view on a stock. Reportedly, it’ll spit out real-time ratings from 0 (negative) to 100 (positive), giving investors yet another “leading indicator” on what to invest in flip for a quick buck.
Founder Paul Hawtin confesses: “This is not some kind of holy grail of buy-sell signals that’s guaranteed to make you money. This is an additional layer of market information…markets are driven by greed and fear, so if you can understand fear and quantify it in real-time, you could use that to protect yourself.” We’ll leave it to the 99 percent to comment on the idea below.
Humans never learn and apparently neither do robots. Autonomous trading AIs went on a spending spree at Knight Capital Group in New Jersey this week, buying up shares in everything from RadioShack to Ford and American Airlines (ouch) in a 45-minute frenzy of disobedience. The company tried to offload the unwanted stock, but discovered it was already nearly half a billion dollars in the red — enough to wipe out its entire profit from 2011 and “severely impact” its ability to conduct business. If only it had protected itself with one of these.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots, Software
Robot stock traders lose $440,000,000 in 45 minutes, need someone to spell it out originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 10:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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