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by gaius 4507 days ago
Sure, but now it's on you to say how long a stock should be owned for, and why that is.

I mean, you could ban HFT and say that you can trade no more than once a second, or a minute, or whatever. Then people would get upset because computers could trade exactly on that second...
1 comments
AnthonyMouse 4506 days ago
> Then people would get upset because computers could trade exactly on that second...

I would think the way to do it would be to hold every trade open for five seconds during which time either party can cancel it.

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gaius 4506 days ago
Then we'd race to see who could cancel as close to 5s as possible.

Regulating trading on speed or time is inherently silly.

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AnthonyMouse 4506 days ago
> Then we'd race to see who could cancel as close to 5s as possible.

That would reduce the scope of the problem by an order of magnitude or more, because it would limit the benefit of being fast to only those trades to which you yourself are already a party and to which you so happen to receive actionable information at exactly the point in time that the trade is about to close.

And then on top of that, you can put a small penalty (e.g. 1c per share) on canceling a trade to be paid to the other party, which should put a quick end to thoughts of initiating and then canceling several million trades per second that you don't actually want to make.

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