Text of the Class Action Lawsuit against HFT (High Frequency Trading Firms) and 13 stock exchanges (NYSE, NASDAQ, CBOE, BATS, et. al.)
Filed by the same guy who 20 years ago won a record $368.5 billion judgment from the 13 biggest tobacco companies.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-0 ... gainst-hft
Long story short: it alleges that we receive “obsolete” data because the “Preferred Data Customers” [HFTs] have advance access [at least 1,499 microseconds early] to said data, hence we’ve suffered injury and damage…
Plaintiffs allege that 1,499+ microseconds is plenty of time for the state-of-the-art HFT computers to figure out how to screw the pooch.
It’s forty pages long, not much new, but pretty incredible, and worthy of your weekend reading.
“The Exchange[s]… sell Private Feed connection lines that transmit data faster for a higher premium charge; the greater the connection capacity size, the higher the fee. Meanwhile, the capacity of the Exchange[s]…connection lines to the Processor is substantially lower, and the procedure for transmission is different, resulting in far slower transmission of data to the Processor, and the Subscribers [you and me] in turn. The Exchange[s]…also sell co-location services for these Private Feeds whereby the Exchange[s] …lease server space to …[HFTs]… in close physical proximity to the Exchange … servers, which, due to the laws of physics, allows the …[HFTs]… to receive the data sooner.”
“Preferred Data Customers [HFTs] have publicly stated that Private Feeds are the only way to know where the market really is because the …Subscriber Feeds are slow and not useful and that, with the Private Feeds, a …[HFT] knows that a transaction has occurred even if the Processor does not yet reflect the transaction.”