Our stock markets have been hijacked and are coming apart, unsafe at any speed for any investor. That's the message that the $440 million scandal at Knight Capital Group is telling us.
But Knight's problems with their latest software are certainly not the first sign of an electronic market gone amok. We've seen it over and over again, first with the "flash crash" in 2010, high speed "mistakes" like the Facebook and other highly anticipated IPOs and countless small electronic missteps over the past three years -- all of which have sapped investor confidence in the fairness of our stock and commodity markets.
They're not sure why or how, but investors suspect that the game is rigged and are refusing to be a part of it -- the monthly outflows from stock mutual funds and indexes shows how deep their distrust has become.
It's not just the regular retail investor that's been marginalized in this rise of the machines -- a generation of traders, mostly of my generation, have been slowly and literally nickeled and dimed out of a career that used to allow their wits and courage to generate a living - now all of their historic advantages are instead delivered inexorably to those diabolical black boxes, leaving nothing -- not a crumb -- for a smart kid looking to work hard and be his own boss as a trader, a job I was lucky enough to have for more than two decades.
The big boys are feeling it too -- it's no coincidence that monster hedge funds run by the likes of George Soros, Stanley Druckenmiller, John Arnold and Louis Bacon have decided to return money to investors, becoming smaller, entirely private or totally retired and gone: Sure, the markets aren't delivering the "easy" returns of the '90s, but mostly they're a lot less reliable, courtesy of machines that generate thousands of trades an hour for reasons no human can possibly understand or process.
I'm no Luddite -- I hear the inexorable march of technology. But I also think its time to try and put at least a part of that genie back into the bottle from whence it came. A transaction tax is a great first step to doing that.
The idea is simple: Charge a miniscule extra fee on every trade executed at every registered exchange. Such a simple charge would make much algorithmic 'churning' of volume uneconomic, while bringing institutional and retail trade back to the major exchanges and away from the ECN "dark pools." You'd begin to re-level the playing field for retail and private investors, generate confidence by returning fairness to the stock markets, greatly reinvigorate employment in the financial markets and gain a nice source of unexpected revenue too.
Besides the black box owners, only the exchanges wouldn't like it: They've spent the last 5 years encouraging the machines -- even spending money to buy algorithmic volume generation and giving access preference to the biggest "market makers" like Citadel, Goldman Sachs and Knight. The exchanges don't care about fairness -- they only care about volume growth.
But trying to reverse the tide on algorithmic trade will help the exchanges in the long run, like a bartender cutting off the chronic drunkard before he goes over the edge. As more and more machines remove more and more humans, these glitches, wild prices, failed offerings, flash crashes will doom the proper operation of the stock markets for everyone -- and ultimately bankrupt the exchanges too.
It's time to put people first and reverse the trend on the machines -- reinvigorating what once was an industry that showcased the best of American capitalism and individual grit.
Follow Daniel Dicker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dan_dicker
I am a money manager in futures and forex. I do not day trade, I swing trade with a few days holding period, and average 2 trades a month for each market I trade (7 in all). So, you can see I am no daytrader nor HFT. This tax would almost put me out of business and almost every CTA I know says the same thing. You need to research who pays this tax and the devastation it does to the small trader, money manager, etc. I am surprised as an oil trader you want this tax. The left liberals want to tax the air you breath, so be careful not to get sucked into the "tiny tax" argument. There are other ways to clamp down on HFT. So, next time get out a calculator and go over your trades to see how much this affects you.
SO - here it is -- in case you missed it: THERE CAN NO LONGER BE A MARKET MAKER EXEMPTION - this is just another regulatory "dodge" on behalf of exchanges to retain high volume producers paying for close nexus access to order flow......
next time I write a piece for huffpo, I promise, I'll spell EVERYTHING out completely and leave nothing to rely upon simple logic.
Ok, you want no exemptions for market makers. But do really think that will happen if a FTT is introduced? You have to be realistic. What will happen is that the market makers will be exempt and the retail investor will have to pay. Be careful what you whish for!
"It's not just the regular retail investor that's been marginalized in this rise of the machines -- a generation of traders, mostly of my generation, have been slowly and literally nickeled and dimed out of a career that used to allow their wits and courage to generate a living - now all of their historic advantages are instead delivered inexorably to those diabolical black boxes, leaving nothing -- not a crumb -- for a smart kid looking to work hard and be his own boss as a trader, a job I was lucky enough to have for more than two decades."
Wow, what a statement. Are you entitled to make a living trading stocks?
I'm a full time trader since 1989 and I'm doing fine making a very good living without any program to trade for me. And I trade the US markets from the other side of the planet. So if you can't make money in the market I rather think you should blame yourself. Using your logic we should not introduce machines to increase productivity in manufacturing.
To anybody considering pushing such a devastating tax, please take the time to find out who will actually pay the bill here, and how many people will lose their careers as a result. I have been a successful trader for 12 years and I would love to continue working in my chosen profession.
Thank you,
Daniel
I'd rather see Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citibank, Bank of America, et. al. destroyed by the unpredictable consequences of fast, automated trading first.
Then once the field is cleared, implement the law.
If a transaction tax would come, firms like Knight would be automatically exempted due to being classified as liquidity providers.
It'll be only people like YOU and ME who will be left paying the tax.
Before this, there were many "fat finger" errors where HUMAN TRADERS (!) entered huge trades with completely wrong numbers - yet you guys seem to have the memory of a goldfish as you don't recall that at all.
Just because we're not in a bull market, isn't an excuse to lash out randomly.
If anything, install a 2 second minimum for orders - if you don't keep an order in for at least 2 seconds then you didn't intend to buy/sell. Extremely easy to implement and enforce, fixes the HFT problem for the most part as well.
If you want to slow down extreme HFT, that are clearer and fairer ways to do it thnn through taxation that will trickle down in buckets to the average private investor/trader.
Semi- active trader does 20 trades/day. typical trade is 500 shares at $20. assume u are flat at the end of the day. Assume a .001 tax rate
capital $50,000 maximum exposure is $200,000
500 x $20 x10(#trades subject to tax) = $100,000 x .001 = $100
$100 x 250 = $25000 = 50% hit to capital.
same calculation with a .002 rate =$50,000 = 100% hit to capital.
-- Matti Leppala, Secretary General of the European Federation for Retirement Provision said: “A tax that tries to shoot at everything that moves will most likely not hit the intended target, but it will kill or wound many innocent bystanders… this new tax would disproportionately impact pension funds and other institutions which provide retirement income.”
-- The Dutch Central Bank study showed that over 40% of the FTT cost would be borne by pensions and retirement savings.
-- Lund University Professor Lars Oxelheim showed that even a very small FTT applied over 30 years would reduce pension payouts by over 5%.
-- Only 9 of 27 European Union countries supported the FTT at the ECOFIN meeting on June 22, 2012.
-- Berkeley Economics Professor Barry Eichengreen, who co-wrote several papers with James Tobin (the man who first proposed the FFT, aka “Tobin Tax”), said: “If the aim is to augment revenues, a Tobin tax is the wrong tool.”
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu once supported the FTT, but now opposes the tax.
The financial transactions tax damages pensions, savings, and the economy.
Learn more at: http://financialtransactiontaxes.com/