Juggling Dynamite

Everyone with capital in publicly traded markets today is vulnerable to the madness and mayhem of HFT.

“Watch High Frequency Traders (HFT) at the millisecond level jam thousands of quotes in the stock of Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) through our financial networks on May 2, 2013. Video shows 1/2 second of time. If any of the connections are not running perfectly, High Frequency Traders can profit from the price discrepancies that result. There is no economic justification for this abusive behavior.

Each box represents one exchange. The SIP (CQS in this case) is the box at 6 o’clock. It shows the National Best Bid/Offer. Watch how much it changes in a fraction of a second. The shapes represent quote changes which are the result of a change to the top of the book at each exchange. The time at the bottom of the screen is Eastern Time HH:MM:SS:mmm (mmm = millisecond). We slow time down so you can see what goes on at the millisecond level. A millisecond (ms) is 1/1000th of a second.

Note how every exchange must process every quote from the others — for proper trade through price protection. This complex web of technology must run flawlessly every millisecond of the trading day, or arbitrage (HFT profit) opportunities will appear. It is easy for HFTs to cause delays in one or more of the connections between each exchange.”

Here is a direct link.

Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones’ charity – the Robin Hood Foundation — fights poverty with the hardnosed, business sense of Wall Street. Here is a direct link.

If profit-focused, JP Morgan had not backed out of his financing commitments for Tesla’s vision of “free” power for all, the world would no doubt be much further ahead in sustainable, clean energy production today. Or did Tesla himself quash his own project? If it had proceeded, think the US would still be investing life and limb to control oil interests in the Middle East?

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 7 January 1943) was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. He is frequently cited as one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla’s patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.

See: The Missing Secrets of Nikola Tesla

Also see Tesla: The Untold Story.  Here is a direct link.