The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading

[sunskyfan]

Re: The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading

Perfect!

Tyler Durden: All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I f*ck like you wanna f*ck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.

[sunskyfan]

Re: The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading

Oh ... and one more ... off to rent the movie!

Tyler Durden: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

[0tr]

Re: The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading

attempting to insert video, originally brought to iTulip by WildspitzE, in the 'Physiognomy of Depression' by EJ July 1 09:



HFT: painting the tape by computer. The authorities got a small part of the HFT code. They wont figure it out. You cannot beat the HFT: SVMs and NNs etc do not model financial series adequately to trade with, because they can not model the decision making/discretionary execution inputs. (70% success rate is a failure) They decide when the trap door opens. Not you.

To win, you need to do what EJ and others on itulip do. Don't try to beat day to day movements, or week to week movements.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading

... Also, once you throw in Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Communications (cell phone), and much of the dotcom leftovers into the "FIRE" or virtual economy this is not just about Finance, Insurance, and Real-estate. The “virtual” economy extends much farther.

The crisis is that if you have "asset destruction" all the capital artificially formed from the "value" of the asset in the economy instantaneously looses legitimacy and cascades vaporizing all or part of everything it was mapped to including who owns the house the mortgage was originally created for. ...

While commodities are real and can't be vaporized they usually can only be held by proxy and the proxy mechanisms will be affected as well. And, where I would enjoy holding some gold for protection, there just isn't enough gold to enable a functioning economy and some new draconian protocol to isolate the money destruction will be created before gold hits $2k. It is a good hedge but it CANNOT BUFFER any true wealth into the future. The Gold bugs will be trapped like a monkey trying to pull a peanut out of jar that their fist is too big to pull through the hole and hold the peanut at the same time. Ironically, though just printed on paper but clearly not touched by the virtual economy collapse, hard currency will probably become in short supply as it will hold the greatest legitimacy as the source of liquidity in an otherwise frozen economy.
...
But man, how many trillions of dollars do you have to create and still not see a bump in global inflation before we have to think maybe things are not what we thought including the tulipers?

BINGO-squared!

Another example comes to my mind, far away from these. For untold generations, tribes have lived in the hills of southeastern Asia, from Cambodia to Laos to Northern Thailand to Burma to Bengladesh to Afghanistan and parts between. They maintained (I presume) an ancient, stable albeit subsistence economy and a rather warlike (as happens in tribal hills) culture. Beginning I believe with the British growing opium in Bengladesh in the 19th century (leading to the British Opium War with China, circa 1840) the Brits and Americans mostly (I'm guessing here) have been overlaying this subsistence economy with the economics of world opiate trade. Currently it seems (from very unreliable sources) that some very publicity shy corners of the CIA, DOD (USA Dept of Defense) and a couple of large banks gain the greatest profits from this trade.

If the Americans were chased from this corner of the world, perhaps spraying Agent Orange on the poppy fields in spite on the way out, it would be a while before the ancient albeit subsistence existence returned, if it ever returned. Probably it would never return, rather China (or Russia or India, but China seems more dynamic these days) would come in there instead and overlay their own schemes on the region, perhaps finding minerals worth mining. The Hollywood elite can be trusted to complain bitterly if this happens, as they have done with the controversy over China and Tibet (I claim vast ignorance as to what's really happening on the ground in that controversy and I have no clue who is in the "right.")

However, sunskyfan, as I think you realized with your comments on the value of hard paper currency, this "virtual" world (not so virtual if your California home is foreclosed or your Afghan tent is hit with a cruise missile or your skyscraper in Dubai lies half finished or the factory that employed you in Detroit or Guangzhou shuts down or your container ship fleet lies still at anchor) will not evaporate entirely. It has created a new order to the world ;) that shapes and organizes in new ways all that humans manipulate. It is just having some rather shocking growing pains.

[TheServant]

Re: The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading

Reminds me of this exchange.

---

Red: [narrating] Tommy Williams came to Shawshank in 1965 on a two-year stretch for B&E. That's breaking & entering to you. Cops caught him sneaking TV sets out the back door of a JC Penney. Young punk. Mr. Rock and Roll. Cocky as hell.

Tommy Williams: Hey, c'mon, old boys! You're movin' like molasses! Makin' me look bad!

Red: [narrating] We liked him immediately.

[mimbulus]

Re: The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading

Hi there, like your style ‘one-post’! I reckon Mega (CAPSLOCKANDLOAD) could learn something from you (I mean that in a caring way obviously).
You ask ‘what is money?’. Check out ‘Nope, That’s Not Money’ on this site. (Can anyone 'do' the link for me please?).
It is not little pieces of paper
It is not numbers on a computer screen
It is not machine code
It is not gold, silver, oil or water.
It is not a conspiracy of bankers (is that the collective noun?).
It is not government fiat.
It is not exploited labour.
It is the representation of human relationships in the abstract (contracts, agreements, promises, expectations, ownership), it is a belief system.
What we use as money and who has control of that product is up to us.
Some questions people don’t want you to ask because the answers are too scary. Expect to be treated like a loon. Keep asking.
Respectfully,
Jo