> Perhaps Texas could use a different trading model that doesn't require ultra high speed trading.
What would that look like? Periodic auctions? Certainly it could be done, I'm just trying to understand what problem might be solved, and whether the solution would be effective.
For example, even with the opening and closing auctions we have today, there can be an advantage to getting your order accepted right before the deadline. Some participants do this, most don't really (depending on the exact definition of "right before"). But the fact that some do tells me that some participants would do the same thing with periodic auctions, and at least for them latency would still be important.
If, as seems likely, latency is fundamentally important to at least some styles of trading, how do you incentivize participants to not value it?
You take bids continuously but publish the bids and "resolve" the auction every X seconds, where X is between 5 and 10. Then there is no speed advantage as long as you can get your bid in within 5 seconds.
There is still a speed advantage. You can look at correlated markets for example and trade at the end of the time window with 5 seconds more info than anyone trading at the start of the time window.
Except with the randomness you won't know if the window is 5 seconds or 10 or anything in between. So sure you could send in your bit at 4.99 seconds but it won't matter if you're a few microseconds off.
I suspect that randomness of some sort is the only way. Without that, whatever the rules of the game, there is a way to somehow get a slim advantage. You can make the advantage small and the costs to try to gain it large, such that it isn’t cost effective to try, but as we’ve seen with HFT, it’s amazing how much people will spend to pick up pennies. Even a tiny gain, exploited frequently enough can be quite profitable.
A Poison process. Just specify the expected value. E.g., if the expected value is 5 seconds and have gone some hours without an event, then the expected time is still 5 seconds.
E.g., like the time to some radio active delay and whatever its expected value to decay is.
Or even a fixed delay. Imagine trading with one month delay - You'd have to bid what you think the stock is actually worth, not what you think everyone else will think it's worth in five milliseconds. That's extreme, of course.
Eric Ries first started talking about a Long-Term Stock Exchange, he suggested long (potentially multi-year) lock-up periods. The LTSE he actually implemented doesn't have that. I speculate that this was a compromised because they are allowing dual listings which helps them gain market share but also would undermine the entire concept of very long lock-ups.
You could force companies to provide standing orders to sell unlimited shares at a price selected when they go public, and one they're unlikely to go below.
This would happily also eliminate price speculation entirely. The price would just be whatever the price is and most returns would come from dividends. Would require a bunch of tax and regulatory changes
What would that look like? Periodic auctions? Certainly it could be done, I'm just trying to understand what problem might be solved, and whether the solution would be effective.
For example, even with the opening and closing auctions we have today, there can be an advantage to getting your order accepted right before the deadline. Some participants do this, most don't really (depending on the exact definition of "right before"). But the fact that some do tells me that some participants would do the same thing with periodic auctions, and at least for them latency would still be important.
If, as seems likely, latency is fundamentally important to at least some styles of trading, how do you incentivize participants to not value it?