The Microsecond Market – IEEE Spectrum
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/the-microsecond-market
Amazing amounts of money & ingenuity devoted to shaving a few microseconds off a trade — does it really add value?
QTs:”
Wall Street might seem the epicenter of U.S. stock trading. In fact, the real action takes place about 50 kilometers away, in a huge, windowless building in suburban Mahwah, N.J.”
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“In June 2010, Spread Networks, of Ridgeland, Miss., announced that it had installed a fiber-optic communications cable between New York and Chicago that followed an especially direct route. That required blasting though mountains at a cost of perhaps several hundred million dollars. Lease bandwidth on that line, the company suggested to high-frequency traders, and you’ll shave more than a millisecond off the time it takes you to send information between the two cities. Like the wire services that mobsters had once touted to bookies, Spread Network’s offer was something high-frequency traders couldn’t refuse—unless they just didn’t have the money to pay for it.”