Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark
High frequency trading. I won’t go into the details, but basically it has become an arms race of being a millionth of a second faster than the other guy. The exchanges (Nasdaq and NYSE) started offering co-location within their facilities and traders started fighting for the best physical real estate within the co-location center (ie. literally trying to be a few feet closer to the exchanges’ computers). Some of the high frequency traders complained about how ‘unfair’ it was to be a few feet farther away. The exchanges conceded and added ‘latency’, basically a few feet of cable, so everyone within the co-location center is equidistant. It baffles me financial progress is moving in this direction.
Prediction by ‘experts’/pundits. Why do people still believe in pundits and ‘experts’ on TV? If ‘experts’ could predict the future with any accuracy, they would be doing something else. They are not always wrong, they are simply not right consistently enough to provide meaningful value. I’m always surprised how confident and certain people sound on CNBC (I rarely feel sure of anything). Keynes got it right when he said, “If you must forecast, forecast often.”
