FYI, for those who didn't see my comment on Friday's blog, I did a bunch of upgrades over the weekend, so let me know if anything isn't working. Traffic is a little lower than normal today, so if anyone is having any problems you can either reach me on my contact form ( http://caracommunity.com/user/6/contact ) or email me at jeff (at) billcara (dot) com, and I'll see what I can do to resolve the problem.

As an experiment, I am turning back on the comment controls. Looks like the bug that existed in the controls when I first tried them has been fixed. Now at the bottom of the list of comments, you can change the way you view them.

In case anyone messes around with it and can't figure out how to get back, the default settings are "Threaded list - expanded", "Date - oldest first", and "300 comments per page."

Feedback is welcome. In theory, you only use these settings if you want to view comments differently, so it should be nothing but new capability...but it's also possible that some settings may break things about the site (I'm thinking links to parent comments, and maybe "ignore thread" functionality). So let me know if I screwed anything up too badly. :)

The problem here isn't people placing bids that they don't expect to see filled, its unequal access to the market. No matter what I do, as a consumer, without paying big $$ to co-locate a server with direct access to the exchanges, I am never going to be able to execute trades in the sub-millisecond range. At that level, normal Internet delays dominate.

I think the answer here is simple. The 15 min idea is a good thought, but way too long. We aren't trying to say people can't change their mind, but we want stock prices to change in a timeframe that does not require automated tools to exploit.

My proposal is that we pick a time period -- I think 1 second would work, but there is room for discussion. Any trades put in during that period are queued up. At the end of that period, they are executed against each other. How exactly you do that is another point for discussion, but the easiest system would be to do it just like it is now: you start with the orders held over from the previous period, then bring in the new orders in the sequence they arrived at the exchange, and whenever one can be matched, it is executed. Ideally, nobody knows the orders until after the trades are all matched, so nobody can predict the outcome of the current period. Then the next period begins. There's also an argument for executing the trades out of order, such that the people willing to sell at the lowest prices and buy at the highest prices get their trades filled first.

There will always be people who have faster systems and can place their orders faster. That's fine. But increasing the time granularity would prevent things like quote stuffing, and would reduce the ability of the big players to react to market changes before any human (or slower computer systems) can even see them. It would also reduce the computer requirements to trade effectively and dramatically decrease the chances of run-away computer programs (such as during the "flash crash"), since they'd only get new input every second or so, adding some stability to the system.

I haven't worked out all the details, but I think something along these lines would make sense, dramatically decrease HFT, and bring individual investors closer to trading parity with the large trading firms.

Thanks for the heads-up! The server rebooted last night, so we need to run some checks on the databases. The site might be down briefly while we do so. Hopefully, it won't be any more than a minor inconvenience.

Just wanted to let people know I made a few upgrades to the site tonight, so if you see any problems pop up in the near future, let me know so I can figure out what I broke! Thanks!

Jeff

Testing

Sorry I didn't post something earlier. Yeah, I fixed the RSI tool much earlier in the day. It was the usual case of one small change on a system causing unexpected things to break. Should be good for the foreseeable future. Sorry for having so many problems with the RSI tool lately -- I just haven't had the time to maintain it like I ideally would. Feel free to contact me directly if it goes down, though if you post on the blog someone will pass it on to me even if I'm too busy to read the comments that day.

I work for a defense contractor, so the concerns here are a little more interesting. We are required by law to protect classified information. If I used my work PC to go to WikiLeaks, and viewed a classified document, my PC would technically be "tainted" and have to be scrubbed (usually involves destroying and replacing any parts that can store data) before it could be used normally again. And they'd have to make sure that information didn't leak onto any other machines on the network. It's hilarious in a way...destroying a PC because it was touched by information freely available on the Internet!

I can't imagine the government having too much of a problem with a student reading that information, however. There's a big difference between reading publicly-available classified information as a normal civilian and the obligations that come with being given access to classified information. Seems like a scare tactic to reduce the spread of that information. I suspect a pretty ineffective one.

We had a few logistical and technical issues, but now that we've figured things out the new chat is up. Sorry for the delay!