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Originally Posted by Buehler445
Flashboys was a truly fascinating book. I listened to it on the tractor. I had to keep backing it up and relistening to parts because I’d be like, “do what now? LOL”.
It’s like listening descriptions of ancient battles. Conceptually I know what’s happening , but I don’t know any of the names, formations, armpit weapons or context so it’s so foreign to me that it’s hard to visualize.
One of my favorite books.
And my broker was talking to me about similar weird shit happening on the minute charts in the grains. It’s no big thing for me but it’s hard for him to work in when it’s possible to get filled on these fishing exercises.
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Commodities markets are different in the way they’re structured, so you wouldn’t be subject to the same obviously bad behavior that the book chronicles in the equity market (which is pure thievery and pathetic in my view). But there absolutely are a lot of the same firms listed in that book (I happen work for one that touches tons of different things in financial markets and otherwise) who would be on the other side of a lot of your activity in grains by virtue of their role as market makers/liquidity providers. But I don’t think they’re taking advantage of you in such a brazen way.
Though I’ll give you an example of something that’s common to every futures market that can be thought of as a bit sketchy. If something is trading at 50.12/50.15 and there’s an average 10 on the bid and 10 on the offer and you have 100 to sell and offer them at 50.14, almost guaranteed the second you input your offer you’ll see a 50.13 offer show up right in front of you. If you cancel your order, that offer disappears. Put it back in and it populates again. And over and over again.
This is just the nature of ‘algos’ and how they operate in markets. It touches me as an institutional investor just as it would touch any retail investor.
And I focus primarily on interest rates so there was a fair bit in the book that was new to me as well. But the arms race for faster technology is something I’m well aware of and it’s absolutely fascinating.