Thinking of day-trading? Think twice.

I was not aware of it - but come to think of it it was bound to happen.
An interesting read first from an ars technica article:
At the back of everyone’s mind is the 1987 program trading crash, described by Richard Bookstaber in A Demon of our Own Design. In the run-up to October of 1987, all of the major market participants had been using essentially the same computer-automated algorithm to hedge their portfolio risk. On Black Monday (10/19/1987), all of the portfolio insurance programs started dumping assets in lock-step, in response to a particular set of inputs. This synchronized selling begat more synchronized selling, and by the time this giant, market-sized feedback loop was shut down by the closing bell, the Dow had lost almost 23 percent of its value in a single day.
It has been happening since computers exist. The greed of Wall Street banks and investment firms is unbelievable. If you think Bear Sterns, Lehman Bros, Merril Lynch it’s just so clear.
And now this HFT (High-Frequency Trading) where the latest and greatest computer gear is being used (at least Nvidia’s and Intel stocks are still good to go for a while… heh). Fucking great.
Read this:
this:
Computer trading worries as NYSE build new datacenter
and finally this:
Recipe for disaster: the formula that killed Wall Street
You gonna love it - if you’re interested in how these huge meltdowns on the ‘market’ are being fabricated
Is it still worth to try and ‘invest’ on the market? Maybe not in the states. Not anymore? What do you think?

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