Links – High frequency trading, poison and Jimmy Carter

I’ve had my eye on high frequency trading (HFT) for a little while. I was initially fascinated by the overwhelming need for connectivity speeds driving up the cost of real estate near the exchanges. If you could locate your trading operation next to the exchange the tiny fractions of a second saved by geographical proximity were worth huge amounts in naked profit.

The whole thing struck me as another example of short term profiteering taking precedence over the more sensible longer term allocation of risk and investment capital (which is after all what stock markets are supposed to do).

The long term trend of shareholding periods has been in decline since the 1960’s when shares were held on average for 8 years. The following 2 links are in disagreement about what the average holding period was in 2012 but whichever data point you prefer, 5 days according to Businessinsider or 22 seconds according to London’s Daily Telegraph, it is clear that we are using the mechanic that is the stock market, in a radically different way than we have ever done before.

Part of the overarching societal philosophy of share ownership was that the long term incentives held by investors, via shareholding, would act as a brake on the incentives for larceny, held by the professional management class. But those long term incentives can only act as a brake if the shares are held in a long term pattern, and today that is not the case. To be fair this is not a triumph of the managerial class over the investor class, this is driven by the profiteering of Wall street and London’s City too. Simplistically more trading generates more trading income, but there are other factors acting here too.

Firstly we have a global capital investment paradigm that is focused on the needs of finance capital not production capital. This so called casino approach to capitalism, and its relationship to production capital, is best understood through the analysis of Carlota Perez in her stunning, and surprisingly accessible, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. This is a very quick summary of her ideas.

Secondly, and something that has only surfaced into popular discourse recently, it appears that there is a fraudulent mechanic in widespread use as a result of HFT. Michael Lewis has penned the expose in his book Flash Boys.

In essence the advantage bestowed on certain traders as a result of their proximity to certain exchanges generates more than quicker sight of price movements. The original story of HFT was that this small advantage generated thousands of small arbitrage trades, but the window of opportunity to make these trades was so small that it could only be accomplished by computers acting autonomously via algorithms.

Among other things Lewis has showed that the various routings around the multiple exchanges are illegally skirting regulations that are designed to present the same price on all exchanges at the same time. This means that a trading outfit that operates on multiple exchanges can make trades based on the market intelligence of a received order. If a client instructs the trader to buy all 10,000 shares at the price they are listed they will need to buy them from multiple exchanges, but the trader’s ability to communicate to the furthest exchanges faster than the official price channels sees them instruct their machines at those locations to buy what is available. The end result is that the original client will only receive say 4000 of the shares they wanted. The differential 6000 shares are now owned by the trader, but only because of the inherent value generated by knowledge of the instruction for the original 10,000 transaction.

Interestingly a key component here is the difficulty of verification.

This lack of human insight about what is occurring through these technical networks, obscures knowledge of what is happening so much so that fraud can flourish. In this regard it is very similar to the fraud rife in the ad tech networks for digital display advertising.

This link from the Washington Post sets the scene very well, explaining the nature of the wider problem.

This piece, published by the NYT is actually an adaptation from Lewis’s book and details how the situation was eventually understood and the actions being taken to rectify the problem. Its long but really good.

In 2006 Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London with the lethally radioactive chemical Polonium. If you recall the incident at the time you will remember that it took a long time before anyone was able to understand what was happening to him, what the poisoning agent was and where he was poisoned. The original location was believed to be the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly although it eventually turned out to be the Pine Bar in the Millennium hotel in Grosvenor square.

The story is much more involved than any 5 minute news segment could possibly have hoped to portray, which I guess is not a surprise. Litvinenko himself was no innocent, with a history in the feared FSB and the KGB before that. He took a stand in favour of Boris Berezovsky over Vladimir Putin, something that no ordinary man would do, and maybe ultimately was contributory to the situation he found himself in.

This article is very long but if you enjoy a spy story, fictional or otherwise, then you will certainly enjoy this. Something I didn’t understand was how much concern was raised by the presence of Polonium in London. The decontamination program employed a staggering 3000 people and operated across 50 different sites, 2 simple numbers but they invoke images of a Men in Black style clean-up operation happening under our noses but with no obvious sign whatsoever that it was happening.

The article also describes the strange world of the Russian Oligarchs and as a result tells part of the recent history of the post cold war Russian experience.

It’s worth finding the time to read this. For fun.

How radioactive poison became the assassin’s weapon of choice

This next piece is also a pleasure to read if only because it is so refreshing to hear an American president (ex) talking so candidly about the role and position of America in the world today and issues within the scope of American domestic politics as well. Jimmy Carter never was like all the rest, whether you agreed with him, whether or not you are a natural republican or a natural democrat it is difficult to fault his sincerity and his integrity. There aren’t many world leaders that it’s easy to say that about.

On the topic of religious persecution of women’s rights.

Well, they actually find these verses in the Bible. You know, I can look through the New Testament, which I teach every Sunday, and I can find verses that are written by Paul that tell women that they shouldn’t speak in church, they shouldn’t adorn themselves and so forth. But I also find verses from the same author, Paul, that say all people are created equal in the eyes of God. That men and women are the same before God; that masters and slaves are the same and that Jews and Gentiles are the same. There’s no difference between people in the eyes of God. And I also know that Paul wrote the 16th chapter of Romans to that church and he pointed out about 25 people who had been heroes in the very early church — and about half of them are women. So, you know, you could find verses, but as far as Jesus Christ is concerned, he was unanimously and always the champion of women’s rights. He never deviated from that standard. And in fact he was the most prominent champion of human rights that lived in his time and I think there’s been no one more committed to that ideal than he is.

I’m not a religious man but I do wish there were more prominent leaders who hold a strong faith, willing to call out the contradictions within their religious texts and simply choose the side that is kind caring and decent instead of aggressive and divisive.

Jimmy Carter