Explain Like I'm Five

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ELI5: Why is high frequency trading allowed? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I don't see how it's a benefit to capitalism or companies or, well, anyone, really, to allow people to make thousands of trades a day for minute profits on each.

My gut feeling is that the stock market would not suffer, and less resources would be wasted, if trades and updates to stock prices were limited to, say, one batch per hour.

There are probably reasons the system is the way it is though.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

That sort of limited trading does happen for some very niche products that don’t have a lot of potential buyers and sellers.

It's actually way more common than you'd think. Trading is frequently internalized in order to maximize arbitration profits.