(zt) 高频交易风光不再

bucks

from NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/1 ... wn.html?hp&_r=0

摘录：

Profits from high-speed trading in American stocks are on track to be, at most, $1.25 billion this year, down 35 percent from last year and 74 percent lower than the peak of about $4.9 billion in 2009, according to estimates from the brokerage firm Rosenblatt Securities. By comparison, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase each earned more in the last quarter than the high-speed trading industry will earn this year.

While no official data is kept on employment at the high-speed firms, interviews with more than a dozen industry participants suggest that firms large and small have been cutting staff, and in some cases have shut down. The firms also are accounting for a declining percentage of a shrinking pool of stock trading, from 61 percent three years ago to 51 percent now, according to the Tabb Group, a data firm.

It is a swift reversal for trading firms that have often looked to other investors like profit machines, thanks to high-powered software and superfast data connections that can take advantage of small changes in the price of a stock.


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The challenges facing speed-focused firms are many, the biggest being the drop in trading volume on stock markets around the world in each of the last four years. This has made it harder to make profits for traders who quickly buy and sell shares offered by slower investors. In addition, traditional investors like mutual funds have adopted the high-speed industry’s automated strategies and moved some of their business away from the exchanges that are popular with high-speed traders. Meanwhile, the technological costs of shaving further milliseconds off trade times has become a bigger drain on many companies.

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The firm’s founder, Thomas Peterffy, said that firms like his “had a field day” in 2008 and 2009. Share prices were plummeting, and the volatile conditions were ideal for high-speed firms. In addition to the high volume of trades in those years, share prices were moving around wildly, allowing computer programs to take advantage of dislocations in prices. Timber Hill, which trades stocks but specializes in options, made a $328 million profit, before taxes, in 2009.

九天

Drop in trading volume on stock markets around the world is the only  reason for drop of Profits from high-speed trading in American stocks., I think.

silicon_beaver

don't like it.