• pelotron@midwest.social
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      7 months ago

      I stopped believing the stock market meant anything ever since computerized high-frequency trading became a thing.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        The stock market is based upon human behavior and however flawed and irrational it is. Even HFT works to exploit human behavior so I bundle it into the same category.

      • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        HFT is about faster price discovery and often is just arbitrage between exchanges.

        If the New York Stock Exchange price of AAPL is $1 more than the Chicago Exchange, then a HFT detects that and buys the Chicago Exchange’s AAPL + sells NYSE AAPL, bringing price discovery to the masses.

        That’s why HFT is, in practice, allowed. Because the vast, vast, vast majority of HFT is important arbitrage between our collection of exchanges in the USA.


        These “dumb” price differences need to be fixed, and it makes sense for the people who discover these differences to profit from them. It also provably makes the markets smoother and better for everyone involved. (New York can know that the price changes over in Chicago will affect them within milliseconds, keeping all the exchanges across the country nearly in sync).

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          That may be how it is now. AI will be employed to make stock trades independently very soon if it hasn’t started yet.

          • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Have you even used ChatGPT? Its slow as fuck.

            HFT is trading within milliseconds. Not trading within dozens-of-seconds.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              That is because you are relying on connecting to their servers rather than having your own extremely powerful ones.

              Also, this would be a completely different sort of AI than a glorified chatbot.

              • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                Also, this would be a completely different sort of AI than a glorified chatbot.

                Uh huh. So you’re just spitballing I take it.

                Name the algorithm. What’s the AI algorithm that’s about to take over the high frequency trading world? A .pdf or citation to a journal would also be nice, something that explains why this new hypothetical algorithm you’re talking about is better than the HFT / Arbitrage that I talked about earlier.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  Yes, of course I’m spitballing. Because I said it likely hasn’t happened yet. I’m not sure why you would expect me to name the algorithm for something that hasn’t happened yet.

                  Are you under the impression that it’s not possible?

                  • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    Yes. People have been trying to use AI as a statistical method for making money for literally fucking decades. Neural nets, genetic algorithms, statistical sampling, etc. etc. etc.

                    All you end up making 99% of the time is a volatility and/or momentum bot. Either a bot that makes tons of money when the stocks are predictable, or a bot that makes tons of money when stocks have wild unpredictable swings. When the opposite happens (ex: volatility is less than expected, or greater than expected), the bots collapse and you lose like $10 million bucks and everyone shuts down the bot. Every single time.

                    Its not even clear how you’re supposed to “test” a trading bot. Everyone’s got ridiculous ideas and “new AI” algorithms that try every few weeks, and they all fail before the unpredictability that is the market.

                    And then it turns out that you could have traded on volatility by just buying VIX and holding it anyway. So if you want a glorified volatility trader, there’s easier ways to do so than spending $millions on developers and $millions on computers and hooking it up to a $100-million bank account and praying for the best.

                    Just put the $100 million into VIX (or short-VIX) and bam. You roughly accomplish the same thing except it didn’t cost you $million developers or $million computers.


                    The stuff that makes money are like, Black Scholes differential equations (which are extremely fast. No "AI’ here, just numerical methods that directly compute a price). Of course, Bvlack Scholes is what they teach in college so everyone knows it. The secret sauce is the stuff that all the firms add to their computers and keep literally secret.

    • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.worldOP
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      7 months ago

      Oh that much is very true and this and reddit pretty much show it. Though I can’t say I’m not trying to at least profit off of reddit’s insanity. Play the absolutely shitty game.