Talk about rocking the boat - what happened this morning?

[Gone4Good]

Unless all countries agree to a world-wide transaction tax, it will fail as investors will simply move their funds to markets that do not have this tax.

I agree with that criticism.

 

[chinaco]

I guess we have to agree to disagree. Unless all countries agree to a world-wide transaction tax, it will fail as investors will simply move their funds to markets that do not have this tax. Ask the country of Sweden how their transaction tax worked. Not only did they fail to raise revenue, most of their prior volume left for London which had a much less onerous transaction tax than Sweden.

I find it interesting that people like to criticize speculators and high frequency traders the second the market starts going down. Why was there no criticism of speculators and high frequency traders in late March 2009 through the rest of 2009 when the market took off?

There are legitimate concerns.

There are ways to deal with it other than a tax.

Of course the people making money from it are going to deny they are causing instabilities or that they have an unfair advantage.

Those markets are essentially money machines... and people do exploit them unfairly.

We had that flash crash and there are many people (in the profession) that are concerned about it. I believe it is very rational to be skeptical about it. It should be looked at very closely.

Technology changes are often ahead of us understanding how it might impact the overall system and the participants in the system.

We may be getting to a point where changes to normal convention require more testing and vetting before they are allowed "on the road" so to speak.

 

[Nords]

Right, the inexperienced do not have a staff of 100 PhD's developing quantitative algorithms that are executed via computers/high speed data lines positioned in close proximity to wall street.

You mean like the Nobel-prize-winning [-]parolees[/-] experts at Long Term Capital Management?

 

[george76]

There are legitimate concerns.

There are ways to deal with it other than a tax.

Of course the people making money from it are going to deny they are causing instabilities or that they have an unfair advantage.

Those markets are essentially money machines... and people do exploit them unfairly.

We had that flash crash and there are many people (in the profession) that are concerned about it. I believe it is very rational to be skeptical about it. It should be looked at very closely.

I couldn't agree more. What caused the flash crash needs to be addressed.

I simply think a solution such as a transaction tax is not the best way to go. Why penalize regular small investors for the abuses of those people that caused the flash crash?

 

[easysurfer]

Did you really think things would calm down so soon?

 

[audreyh1]

The internet rhythm method of contraception was invented by Al Gore over 20 years ago

I'll never think of algorithms in the same way ever again!!!

Audrey