[Torkel]

Same stock is listed in more than one place, and also e.g. stock movements in NY affect stocks in London. There are undersea cables built for this purpose: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a...

[eecc]

What a waste of human ingenuity. And I thought ad-tech was bad enough

[TomGullen]

I think you can argue on the whole is a waste, but I do believe it does have some advantages. EG efficient HFTs can reduce bid ask spreads which does save a lot of money for retail traders.

[sverhagen]

I think the premise was that such investments are wasteful if it's only for a trading arms race.

[sumedh]

> EG efficient HFTs can reduce bid ask spreads which does save a lot of money for retail traders.

Berkshire Hathway has $1000+ spreads yet you dont see a lot of people complaining.

[TomGullen]

Stock price is probably a pretty big factor in that along with volume.

[sumedh]

Exactly, that is the point.

[Dylan16807]

But being able to do that 50 milliseconds faster really doesn't.

[unishark]

That is true for much of the finance field.

[emteycz]

Actually it's not. There are objective benefits to society that you simply ignore.

[piva00]

As there are objective downsides that we, collectively, are ignoring right now.

Financial capitalism shouldn't be praised, at the very best it's a lesson, we got useful tools out of it and that is all.

[emteycz]

I am not praising anything, I am correcting your statement that much of the financial industry is a waste of human ingenuity. That "waste of human ingenuity" enabled us to build the modern world.

[piva00]

It wasn't my statement.

[paul_f]

Don't forget using the equivalent of the entire power consumption of Austria to mine bitcoin?