Comment Text:
High Frequency Trading is a pox on our nation. It allows a small fraction of the population to skim profits at an unsustainable rate while manipulating the price of securities. High Frequency Trading also gives unfair advantages to businesses co-located near the stock exchanges. There is a high degree of risk associated with this practice that will eventually come home to roost. It is much better for our nation to invest in actual capital, such as in businesses that produce goods, than to have a practice like High Frequency Trading which produces nothing of value but a greater and greater concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals. Our response as a nation to the events of May 6, 2010 should include a requirement that every stock trade be held for a minimum time period of at least one hour, that every stock trade have a digital attachment identifying the company making the trade, and that no trades be allowed that give a preferential time advantage to any company through co-location. We are wasting the talent of many of our best and brightest minds in the quest for concentration of money by extremely dubious means. Although the practices of the quants are not currently illegal, they are blatantly unproductive and immoral.
