[gist]

> Millions of trades a day each contain teensy, tiny little updates about the state of the economy. Think of them like tweets, not like State of the Union addresses. This married couple wants to send their daughter to college more than they want Google. That hedge fund likes Coke more than Apple. This pension fund doing it's weekly buy of an index to prepare for 2075.

Can you explain this further in context to the parent comment? You lost me after "married couple wants to send their daughter to college more than they want google".

[sithadmin]

I think the gist of what's being argued here is that the increased volume of trades (facilitated by HFT's drive to minimize transaction time) allows more 'real time' information about the relative value of instruments to be communicated.

That said, the first example quoted don't really make a lot of sense, in my opinion. A couple selling off some stock to pay for their child's tuition probably won't ever have their transaction directly represented in the market (it will likely be lumped in with or divvied up from other orders handled by the same brokerage), so the information conveyed is ultimately somewhat diluted.