patrick.net

The SEC has been mostly worthless under Bush, but is even worse under Obama. These violations have not only accelerated, they are now in the open and carried out blatantly as everybody knows this administration abandoned the rule of law. Must be nice to be part of the "elite group" of traders ;)

This is clearly insider trading. All those who paid that fee should get 30 years in pound-me-ass prison. It's these guys, not Martha Stewart, that need to serve as the example.

More reason we need to use my formula for capital gains taxes: R = 1 - 0.01M

Also, a buffered queue would make this kind of fraud impossible. The queue places the complete order for the time period and gives everyone the same price in that block.

"B-but, if we don't allow millisecond bids, there won't be liquidity."

thunderlips11 says

"B-but, if we don't allow millisecond bids, there won't be liquidity."

Oh, we'll allow them, but their capital gains will be taxed at 100%.

"We're market makers."

"You obviously don't know anything about capital flows."

Dan8267 says

This is clearly insider trading.

If Steve Jobs or Tim Cook from Apple makes a product announcement at a user group or development conference to a group of Elite users customers and developers who paid, also have earlier access than those not present who did not pay. how is that insider trading ?

Vicente says

for a fee, a full two seconds before its official release

and sometimes when its good news .. stock still might go up or down.
better off flipping a coin... there are many daily variables that drive the market.

thomaswong.1986 says

Dan8267 says

This is clearly insider trading.

If Steve Jobs or Tim Cook from Apple makes a product announcement at a user group or development conference to a group of Elite users customers and developers who paid, also have earlier access than those not present who did not pay. how is that insider trading ?

That's quite a bit different from a national consumer confidence index number or the feds QE announcements.

thomaswong.1986 says

and sometimes when its good news .. stock still might go up or down.

better off flipping a coin... there are many daily variables that drive the market

Not for numbers like consumer confidence or esp. fed QE => Taper = risk off/sell vs No Taper = risk on/buy, milliseconds matter here with odds clearly skewed.

Vicente, I thought you supported programmers at state sponsored universities. Some poor coder is going to lose his job at the University of Michigan if they close this operation down.
While, like everyone else, I'm disgusted by the whole thing, I can certainly understand the pro camps arguments. Perhaps patrick can release a monthly economic indicator gleaned from the postings on his blog. Given some of the more interesting anonymous posts, we can call it the Pat.net Inverse Economic Indicator. He can give premium subscribers a 20 second heads up before the index is released to the general public. As AF says, "Why do you hate freedom?"

I always thought there should be a law that if you buy stock/shares you can't sell it for at least a year.

That would cut down on most of the BS that makes up most of the noise on WS.

FortWayne says

That would cut down on most of the BS that makes up most of the noise on WS.

Brilliant.

FortWayne says

I always thought there should be a law that if you buy stock/shares you can't sell it for at least a year.

There is as it applies to IPOs .. it can be 6 months out.

And after IPOs.. for public stocks for many insiders ongoing many months are blacked out .. 45 days before earnings and several after.. so 4 quarters at 50 days.. gets you 200 days you are unable to sell..

FortWayne says

That would cut down on most of the BS that makes up most of the noise on WS.

US stock is also traded on foreign exchanges.. you propose to handle those how ?

mell says

thomaswong.1986 says

Dan8267 says

This is clearly insider trading.

If Steve Jobs or Tim Cook from Apple makes a product announcement at a user group or development conference to a group of Elite users customers and developers who paid, also have earlier access than those not present who did not pay. how is that insider trading ?

That's quite a bit different from a national consumer confidence index number or the feds QE announcements.

Information is information...