How to slow down a stock exchange
How to slow down a stock exchange on HackerTube: recommended by 1 Hacker News commenter across 1 month, 2019–2023.
Tom Scott visits IEX, a stock exchange that slows down trading with a long coil of fiber. The coil removes the speed advantage of high-frequency traders.
What HN commenters said
7 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
m0rphlingAug 2019Recommends
Tom Scott did a nice video [1] on IEX's setup with 38 miles of fiber to add enough latency as a mechanism of fairness. Purportedly, this benefits all exchanges after it was successfully deployed. It seems like the incentives are not there for larger, more established exchanges to implement such blanket latency. So, firms like GS see a benefit to this kind of investment. [1] ▶ this video
in “Goldman Sachs is spending $100M to shave milliseconds off stock trades” · View on HN
kmeisthaxJul 2023Cites it
There's actually an exchange that did this. In order to avoid software problems that would negate the slowing, they actually plugged their servers into a giant box full of fiber optic cable. If someone manages to get past that, then they don't have an HFT firm, they have a time machine. ▶ this video
in “Commercial Interests Petition FCC for High Power Allocation on Shortwave” · View on HN
colejohnson66May 2022Cites it
Not apocryphal; IEX has 38 miles of wire in their building. Tom Scott did a video a few years ago about it: ▶ this video
in “Riot Games: Artificial Latency for Remote Competitors” · View on HN
blibbleMay 2022Cites it
the wire thing is definitely real for IEX it's part of the exchange's license and they have several videos of the rather large wire there's even a tom scott video on it: ▶ this video
in “Riot Games: Artificial Latency for Remote Competitors” · View on HN
bigmattystylesJan 2021Cites it
Do exchanges like HF traders? I know HF traders themselves justify their own existence by claiming they provide liquidity to the markets, but I've always just sort-of rolled my eyes at that. They only extract value and provide none, in my opinion, tax the profits heavily. I think every exchange should pad each order by a random number between 0 and 250ms, it would take care of it. The company profiled in this video add lag ▶ this video
in “Intruder at the top of the 20 meter amateur band?” · View on HN
n3k5Oct 2020Cites it
Tom Scott made a short video about these cables: ▶ this video 61 kilometres of fibre-optics for a 350 microsecond delay.
in “Timekeeping in Financial Exchanges” · View on HN
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anfractuosityJun 2020Cites it
The IEX stock exchange uses fibre to introduce a fixed delay - [link] "This 350 microsecond delay adds a round-trip delay of 0.0007 seconds and is designed to negate the certain speed advantages utilized by some high-frequency trader" I watched this short video about it too - ▶ this video
in “Companies Pitch Shortwave Radio to Shave Milliseconds Off Trades” · View on HN