Ultrafast Trading Costs

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British regulators have studied the “tax” imposed on ordinary traders by ultrafast traders. The latter use high speed computers and powerful algorithms to

“latency arbitrage,” in which ultrafast traders seek to react to fresh, market-moving information more quickly than others can.

The latency is the ultrafast traders’ ability to act on slightly out-of-date prices that are inaccessible to the bulk of us traders because we don’t have those fancy computers running those algorithms. The “tax” metaphor is the difference between those (very—a matter of microseconds) slightly dated prices and the prices available to us in more real time.

The “tax” amounts to some $5 billion gained globally by the ultrafast compared to the rest of us. That seems like a large number, but put it in perspective.

The value of the aggregated global stock markets was around $86 trillion in 2019. The “tax” from the ultrafast’s computing/time advantage amounts to a bit under 0.006%.

That’s not to say the artificial arbitrage shouldn’t be addressed, but it does suggest that the urgency isn’t great. We have time figure out how to level this tiny bump in the playing field without moving, for purely noneconomic reasons, to restrict some traders to the advantage of others.

Big Government vs Free Market

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An economist says Apple isn’t paying its fair share of taxes. There is many things about which to criticize Apple, but this isn’t one of them.

Davos lights insist that companies are responsible to and for their employees, their suppliers, and their communities. Indeed. And the way to execute that responsibility is to be responsible first to companies’ owners. That’s what helps companies thrive so they can have, and have more, employees and suppliers—which money rotation funds those local communities.

What is Apple’s “fair share?” This economist declined to say—just that it ought to pay more.

The economist insists, instead,

the first step to being a good corporate citizen is to pay tax….

But how much? There’s that carefully undefined “fair share” bit, again. And: why should a business pay any tax at all? After all, the business might sign the tax payment check, but it’s the business’ customers who pay the tax, in the form of higher prices to cover the tax cost. Again, this is carefully unaddressed.

Instead, the economist and the lights of Davos insist that it’s somehow wrong for businesses to minimizes its costs and that it’s somehow wrong for nations to compete on tax rates in order to draw business investment so their citizens can have jobs and prosper.

This is Big Government ideology.

In a free market environment, though, nations do compete on tax rates for the benefit of their citizens. Businesses do work hard to minimize all costs so as to compete effectively on pricing, which directly benefits their customers and which indirectly benefits their communities from localities up through their nations.

In a free market environment, a good corporate citizen works to compete and so to thrive and so to take care of its employees, its suppliers, and its community.

Political Revenge

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Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the…Warren.

And so she intends. Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) has issued her administration transition and “anti-corruption” document. She even intends to establish a “Justice Department Task Force” to put a veneer on her venal program of political vengeance. Ex-President Barack Obama (D) and his Attorney General Eric “Wing Man” Holder were pikers.  So was their kind-of distant ancestor, Joe McCarthy.

She’s already personally threatening Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, White House Adviser Kellyanne Conway, and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. Who knows how far she’ll go with her already out-of-control rage?

Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Republican Party?

Warren’s document makes her attitude plain.

This will be no ordinary transition between administrations….

Keep this in mind in November.

“The ‘Corrupt Purposes’ Impeachment”

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The Wall Street Journal offered some thoughts along these lines re the current impeachment trial.

Especially pernicious is the new House “corrupt purposes” standard for removing a President from office.

“Corrupt Purposes,” though, isn’t the only failure of this so-called impeachment that’s being tried in the Senate.  Just as pernicious, certainly far more dangerous, is Progressive-Democrats’ repeated (including Wednesday afternoon by Jerry Nadler in his presentation before the Senate) demand that Trump produce documents, witnesses to prove his innocence.

This attacks the very core of American jurisprudence; it sets every American, not just a Party-hated President, at direct, personal risk.

It’s dismaying that the NLMSM, not the WSJ alone, wholly ignores this unAmerican attack on one of our foundational principles.

More Censorship in the Offing

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Amazon and YouTube are two companies peddling streamed videos, and they’re looking at “filtering” certain content.

An (unidentified) Amazon spokeswoman says

We continuously review and monitor titles to ensure that they are in accordance with our policies and guidelines. If content is identified as not meeting those standards, it is immediately removed.

YouTube, also:

[A] self-avowed creature of user-generated video, also has faced the challenge of policing objectionable content on its site.

Policing objectionable content.

Indeed.

It’s the same “challenge” faced by all sites, not only Amazon or YouTube, though, and it’s rank censorship.  Whose definition of “objectionable,” what “policing” techniques are used—with whose consent? Not the user, not a citizen.  This is a challenge best ignored altogether.

The Wall Street Journal, at the link above, also asked a question:

What steps, if any, should Amazon take to help viewers differentiate between professional and amateur content in its video library?

I’ll extend the question to include “objectionable” content, and the answer is plain: the same steps any site should take, and they’re similar to those taken since movies were invented: ID the producer(s), director(s), and leading actors, and if those names are unavailable, note that, too.

Viewers are fully capable of taking this information and determining for themselves what programming is legitimate or unobjectionable. It is, after all, their criteria of “legitimate” and of “objectionable” that matters, and these criteria are unique to each person.

In the end, it is, or should be, the viewer’s choice of what to watch, not the censors’.