raging bulls

Wed Aug 8 15:02:13 UTC 2012

No, not ever shorter under-see cables no.  NEUTRINOS -shooting information
at speed of light right through the earth (not around it)
Should there be any high speed traders in here this is what you should
invest all your money in to gain advantage against your competition

First it was cold war times which gave birth to the Internet, that has
changed our lives from the ground up
Maybe this time it will be the stock markets and scent of money that will
give the communication development spiral an unimaginable momentum

adam

-----Original Message-----
From: Naslund, Steve [mailto:SNaslund at medline.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2012 4:14 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: RE: raging bulls

It is a tough technical problem to be sure but not insurmountable.
Think about a system in which the real time market data is also encrypted in
such a way that it can only be decrypted at a particular point in time.
Essentially it would be like each trading system receiving an envelope that
must be opened simultaneously.  Picture a satellite network that is time
synchronized to transmit a key stream used to decrypt the data that is
received over a terrestrial network.  I am not talking about easy to
implement here just what is possible.  It is probably easier than faster
than light travel although I supposed real estate on Mt Everest could get
very valuable (closer to the
satellites) :)

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Brett Frankenberger [mailto:rbf+nanog at panix.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2012 9:08 AM
To: Naslund, Steve
Cc: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: raging bulls

On Wed, Aug 08, 2012 at 08:52:51AM -0500, Naslund, Steve wrote:
> It seems to me that all the markets have been doing this the wrong
way.
> Would it now be more fair to use some kind of signed timestamp and 
> process all transactions in the order that they originated?  Perhaps 
> each trade could have a signed GPS tag with the absolute time on it.
> It would keep everyone's trades in order no matter how latent their 
> connection to the market was.  All you would have to do is introduce a

> couple of seconds delay to account for the longest circuit and then 
> take them in order.  They could certainly use less expensive 
> connections and ensure that international traders get a fair shake.

This isn't about giving international traders a fair shake.  This sort of
latency is only relevant to high speed program trading, and the
international traders can locate their servers in NYC just as easily as the
US-based traders.

What it's about is allowing traders to arbitrage between markets.  When
product A is traded in, say, London, and product B is traded in New York,
and their prices are correlated, you can make money if your program running
in NY can learn the price of product B in London a few milliseconds before
the other guy's program.  And you can make money if your program running in
London can learn the price of product A in NY a few milliseconds before the
other guy's program.

Even if you execute the trades based on a GPS timestamp (I'm ignoring all
the logistics of preventing cheating here), it doesn't matter, because the
computer that got the information first will make the trading decision
first.

     -- Brett