[2015-10-13] Benefits of Insider Trading
Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2015 2:55 am
http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3890
Panel 3 is from a true story. They* actually did spend ungodly sums of money to build fiber-optic lines between Chicago and New York on improbably straight paths through ridiculous ground conditions, just to get a couple milliseconds' advantage over the competition (*evil people who used this to screw people over for profit), even paying princely sums to have their trading servers located in the rack closest to where the connection comes in the building. The book retraces the steps of the Canuck trader who smelled something amiss and upon much investigation discovered what was happening.
Ther's a book about this called "Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt" by Michael Lewis, and despite being about hedge fund financing and IT infrastructure, is actually very well written and quite a page-turner. I highly recommend it.
- RG>
Panel 3 is from a true story. They* actually did spend ungodly sums of money to build fiber-optic lines between Chicago and New York on improbably straight paths through ridiculous ground conditions, just to get a couple milliseconds' advantage over the competition (*evil people who used this to screw people over for profit), even paying princely sums to have their trading servers located in the rack closest to where the connection comes in the building. The book retraces the steps of the Canuck trader who smelled something amiss and upon much investigation discovered what was happening.
Ther's a book about this called "Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt" by Michael Lewis, and despite being about hedge fund financing and IT infrastructure, is actually very well written and quite a page-turner. I highly recommend it.
- RG>