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Star Wars Trading

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High speed traders are racing to zero–the elimination of time to execute trades–with lasers. Investors depending on stop-losses may want to pay attention. With instant laser trading imagine how quickly a line will form when sellers want out of the market. Remember, just because a seller wants out at “X” dollars, it doesn’t mean there’s a matching buyer. The bid could be several dollars lower making the stop loss “peace of mind” useless. Read more on laser trading here in The WSJ:

In March, a small Chicago communications company plans to switch on an array of laser devices linking the New York Stock Exchange’s data center in Mahwah, N.J., with the Nasdaq data center in another New Jersey community, Carteret.

The lasers, perched atop high-rise apartment buildings, towers and office complexes along the 35-mile stretch between the communities, are the first phase of a grid intended to link nearly all U.S. stock exchanges this way, zipping market data and rapid-fire trades.

It is the latest salvo in the “race to zero,” traders’ term for their efforts to whittle away the difference between the speed their orders travel at and the speed of light. Zero, the point at which that difference would disappear, has become a kind of holy grail to computerized traders, for whom nanoseconds—billionths of a second—can spell the difference between profit and loss in their algorithm-driven trades.

 

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E.J. Smith

Editor-in-Chief
E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zilldjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@youngresearch.com.

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