Trading Hours

[freedomno1]

I think we should all point and laugh at the floor traders while they "get some sleep after a tough day" while we rise off into the sunset on server racks.

Floor traders don't exist anymore.  They have been replaced by scripts.

That's very very true damn algorithms and noise

Market making is a waste of human resources.  It is a very well defined process that is easily automated.

That said, I'm not okay with programs that are allowed to front run trades by being given access to orders before they are eligible to be executed.

I'm not really happy with algorithmic trading and it's ability to manipulate limit orders by selling just enough to eat a persons order then pump the price down again
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/papers/vwap.pdf
Papers kind of long but is pretty much the explanation

That is exactly the problem I mentioned.  They have an advantaged view of the retail orders and are able to place orders to be executed before the retail trades execute.

That said the problems of getting priority in trading by thousands of a second over other's is also an issue and issuing shares and cancelling orders in the same timeframe is another problem

This gets at the other main problem: it is illegal for a human to place an order without intending to let if fill.  Algorithms are permitted to do this due to a bug in the way the law was written.

In general, I don't see a problem with allowing companies to rent out rack space in the exchange's datacenter.  This is no different from a trade paying a fee to participate.  It is the ability to front run retail orders and the ability to stack the order book (and remove the orders quick enough if retail orders come in that will mess up their manipulation) that are the problems.

I agree completely
On the bright side at least they try to restrict the second problem now of flash orders on the major exchanges
But that's in theory who the heck is tracking it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_trading
Under an exception to Rule 602 of Regulation NMS flash orders are currently allowed.
As of May 2010, the proposals have not been implemented. Even though most programs have been stopped voluntarily, it is still possible, at least with Direct Edge.

Marketwatch pretty much said it
Get it? Never trade. It is a loser's game
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hft-quants-crush-main-street-investors-2009-10-06?pagenumber=2

Still want to play the day-trading loser's game? Warning: "Today's order books are filled with feints and parries, made and withdrawn in a blink of the electronic eye, 1,000-share bids and offers that are stalking horses for million-share moves." And "when the market moves, to do it again. By posting bids and offers for the same securities simultaneously."

Only a fool would bet against the new HFT-Quants or challenge them out there on "The Singularity" battlefield, where "the high-frequency boom is reshaping securities markets everywhere." Don't trade, stick with a Lazy Portfolio of no-load index funds.

Pretty much its put your order out there robot eats it and push market down lol.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/world-federation-of-exchanges-reports-on-high-frequency-trading-hft-2013-05-29

[notme]

Exactly.  Trading is dead unless you are a programmer.  Invest for the long term, or do something else with your money.

[freedomno1]

Exactly.  Trading is dead unless you are a programmer.  Invest for the long term, or do something else with your money.

Or trade in the bitcoin market the algorithms are still being developed here xd
Think we would have a couple with all the programmers around and API's
I only saw one lol and it's alone so easy to track it haha
But probably not enough liquidity for the big investors at wall street to look at yet besides holding currency

[Peter Lambert]

Exactly.  Trading is dead unless you are a programmer.  Invest for the long term, or do something else with your money.

Or trade in the bitcoin market the algorithms are still being developed here xd
Think we would have a couple with all the programmers around and API's
I only saw one lol and it's alone so easy to track it haha
But probably not enough liquidity for the big investors at wall street to look at yet besides holding currency

In the bitcoin stock markets the volume is so low and outside factors can have such a huge influence, it is safer to just stick with manual trading.

[freedomno1]

Exactly.  Trading is dead unless you are a programmer.  Invest for the long term, or do something else with your money.

Or trade in the bitcoin market the algorithms are still being developed here xd
Think we would have a couple with all the programmers around and API's
I only saw one lol and it's alone so easy to track it haha
But probably not enough liquidity for the big investors at wall street to look at yet besides holding currency

In the bitcoin stock markets the volume is so low and outside factors can have such a huge influence, it is safer to just stick with manual trading.

Just means were safe from the robot trade overlords for now
Well until we grow even bigger

[Stephen Gornick]

No. Also this has been discussed a few times before.

Here was my response in one of those threads (slightly different question ... relating to closing over the weekend)

An efficient capital market is a market that reflects all available news and information. An efficient market is also quick to absorb new information and adjust stock prices relative to that information. This is known as an informationally efficient market. Generally, efficient markets are expected to reflect all available information. If that is not the case, investors with the information may benefit leading to abnormal returns.

 - http://www.investopedia.com/exam-guide/cfa-level-1/securities-markets/emh-efficient-market-hypothesis.asp
 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis

There aren't many (or any ?) methods for a retail investor to do forex trading over the weekend.   There was one, OANDA, but they claimed the low volume was too challenging for them where they would be taking on too much risk having to take the other side of the trades:
 - http://www.forexcrunch.com/oanda-closes-weekend-trading

Of course, there is a lot of forex trading over the weekend -- just not by you or I.  Central banks, corporate and institutional (government) bankers, multinational corporations and more are all trading 24x7.

So the market is efficient for them.  The rest of us stuck with a losing forex position thanks to news that occurs over the weekend are stuck with that increasingly deteriorating position until the markets open on Monday (or Tuesday, when Monday is a banking holiday like what happened this 3-day weekend.)  

That's not the definition of an efficient market.  Market-changing information occurs over the weekend as well (with announcements oftentimes timed specifically for release over the weekend.)  Bitcoin markets don't have this restriction.    That still doesn't mean bitcoin exchanges can be considered "efficient" though.  For instance, there was a pattern called the "weekend dip" in which buyers interested in buying had insufficient cash at the ready at the exchanges in order to buy and as a result there was little buying to counter a weekend selloff until new cash arrived at the exchanges when funds sent through the banking system were credited.   Lately, however, the weekend dip opportunity seems to have abated.

At some point a financial company will start using Bitcoin as the method for moving value in and out of other assets, including offering the ability for that to continue throughout the weekend as the way to differentiate that investment offering from the competition.

[Odalv]

:-) +1