Why not invest hundreds of millions to lay cable and erect microwave towers when it allows you to skim billions off legitimate participants trying to use public financial markets for investing every millisecond of every day. Good gig when you can rig it for sure. As for why law enforcement and supposed regulators are allowing the rest of us to be robbed and raped by these fraudsters, well that’s easy: they are bought and paid for by those on the make. Any one else have a problem with any of this? Well you should, because if you aren’t an HFT firm, then you are the patsy. See Rural residents fight traders’ plans for masts as high as Shard:
Vigilant Global and New Line Networks (NLN) want to build communications towers to shave milliseconds off the time it takes to make multimillion-dollar trades.
But their proposals have met with dismay from locals, who are opposed to the idea of the “eyesore” masts in their neighbourhood.
The two firms, who build ultra-fast cable networks that hedge funds and investment banks pay to use, have submitted planning applications for the masts near Richborough. They hope that the giant structures, both more than 1,000ft high, will win them business from high-frequency traders, known as “flash boys”.
High-frequency trading is a form of financial transaction that uses powerful computers to make large trades as quickly as possible. It requires ultra-fast data transfer, in some cases not much slower than the speed of light, that allows traders to steal a march on rivals by closing deals fractionally quicker.
