The SEC uses Tradeworx datas to analyze the market and causes of flashcrashes, while high-frequency traders get a prime access to the SEC’s datas to place bets. Fair trade.
Hedge funds and other rapid-fire investors can get access to market-moving documents ahead of other users of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s system for distributing company filings, giving them a potential edge on the rest of the market.
The nemesis of Wall Street’s high-frequency traders operates out of an apartment-sized office above the Bliss Salon — manicure/pedicure $45 — on Elm Street in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka.
New data from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) show that only 3.2% of the orders placed in the stock market in the second quarter of 2013 actually went through.
But why stop there? One trading engineer has proposed positioning a line of drones over the ocean, where they would flash microwave data from one to the next like the chain of mountaintop signal fires in The Lord of the Rings. “At what point do you say, ‘This is fast enough’?” asks Brent Weisenborn, a former NASDAQ vice president.
Translation: the ultimate goal of many of these programs is to gum up the system so it slows down the quote feed to others and allows the computer traders (with their co-located servers at the exchanges) to gain a money-making arbitrage opportunity.
Abnormal Capitalist 