Goldman Sachs Has Fastest Computer Trades - Obama's Infrastructure?

[WhiskeyGirl]

Is this why the US needs to spend billions on infrastructure?  How much benefits Goldman and others at the expense of Main Street?  How much adds to the perpetual debt Obama is creating?

In the real world, communities ask developers to pay for roads, lights, schools when they build homes and subdivisions.

Did all these investment companies pay for all these high speed upgrades?

Goldman Sachs Tops JPMorgan as World’s Best Broker (Update1)

By Jeff Kearns, Whitney Kisling and Nina Mehta

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — The near darkness behind the bulletproof doors of a windowless Secaucus, New Jersey, warehouse is humming with tens of thousands of computers as U.S. exchanges open on a December Friday.

Brokerages and trading firms, battling for the fastest access to capital markets, lease space at this Equinix Inc. center and others to place their machines as close as possible to stock exchange computers. The practice, known as co-location, is one way firms are vying to win fractions of a second — the difference between getting a trade and missing it.

On Jan. 13, the SEC took a first step toward reviewing the effect of trading strategies in which computers may buy or sell shares as many as 1,000 times a second. The commission asked traders, exchanges and the public to weigh in on high-speed trading, which has soared since 2005 to account for as much as 61 percent of U.S. stock market activity and 70 percent of individual trades, financial services consultant Tabb Group LLC says.

“What you needed this past year versus 2007 and early 2008 was lots of tools, technology and the use of gray matter,” says Peter Weiler, executive vice president of global sales at Abel/Noser Corp., a New York-based broker that also analyzes trading costs. “Brokers needed to bring their A game.”

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ousted JPMorgan Chase & Co. as the firm that got the best prices for its institutional clients during Bloomberg’s 12-month ranking period from July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009, according to data compiled by Ancerno Ltd.

During that time, stock volatility quadrupled from its 20- year average and the Dow Jones Industrial Average swung by more than 40 percent.

“Any time a client trades with us, we try to match them off against our natural internal flows,” he says. “That way we can minimize the trading footprint we leave in the marketplace.”

Another kind of 'dark pool'?  Are the details of the trades ever made public?  Any conflicting interests?  Insider trading?

read more here - http://interestingnews2010.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/goldman-sachs-has-fastest-computer-trades-in-the-world/