While i find the technological challenges in HFT very exciting, i would never want to work for the companies benefitting from that work. If that means i will make less money and someone else will come in and do it, then so be it.
I thought there was a consensus in this community on how the leading traders just squeeze money out of all other wannabe sharks. The skills I find most relevant are low ethics and networking (not the technological type of networking).
I'm surprised that the morality of HFT firms keeps coming up even among technically enlightened audiences.<p>I'll preface this by saying I'm not a HFT or affiliated to one but I strongly believe that HTFs and UHTFs play a valuable role in well regulated markets. We can argue endlessly as to whether the financial markets are well regulared but for this discussion let us assume they are pretty close and that if they aren't there's an HFT out there that's working to discover why and capitalize on it.<p>HFTs also provide massive liquidity and allow people that trade large positions (Pensions, Insiders e.g start up founders etc) to enter and exit into the market without causing massive waves in the instruments they are trading.
If we put aside for a second the overall sleaziness of this industry that makes working for it very unattractive, isn't HFT at a dead end? Do people still make a lot of money off it? Hasn't it reached the tail-end of diminishing returns?
I'm happy to see this pop up on HN since HFT is something I've been looking into lately. If you're interested to dig deeper into HFT and algorithmic trading, 'Inside the Black Box' will be a good read. Link: www.amazon.com/Inside-Black-Box-Quantitative-Frequency/dp/1118362411<p>If you want to take your reading further, there are some great recommendations on the review section. And just to get an insider look into quant traders and the effect HFT can have on the market, I also recommend these two short documentaries made by the dutch national TV:<p>1. Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed2FWNWwE3I" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed2FWNWwE3I</a><p>2. Money & Speed: Inside the Black Box
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq1Ln1UCoEU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq1Ln1UCoEU</a>
Keep the following in mind..<p>HFT is not very profitable anymore.There are a fair number of companies in the field now.<p>HFT tends to be algorithmically simplistic.This is not because stupid people are working there but its very difficult to have algorithmic complexity and speed,and speed is more important.<p>It is very much a winner takes all game,profits are not evenly distributed,being fast is VERY important.<p>However good you are you are not a trader.You are a codemonkey. You will never be rewarded or compensated as a trader in most of these firms(some firms like Rentech are an exception to this,but rentech is not typical high frequency).<p>Your hourly rate will probably not be worth it. When you factor in variable compensation(ie bonus) which is not guaranteed and horrible working hours you would in most cases be better off with some boring bank java contract for compensation.
> While many UHFT firms have moved towards custom hardware (both for processing and networking), some less latency-sensitive systematic trading firms still make use of multithreaded C, C++ and Java (with custom garbage collection).<p>Aside from the hiring theme I have a question. I'd think given that network speeds would start being the bigger bottleneck. Is location at all important to these firms? The speed of light is fast, but the closer you are to the exchanges, the better the advantage over competitors must be.
On the topic of the utility of HFT my personal opinion of is it reduces spread costs but adds systemic fragility.
I actually doubt stock markets are socially utile,let alone HFT but that is an argument for another day.<p>The real trading problem when we look at access and information asymmetry is not HFT but dark pools.HFTs typically all compete for the same pie anyway.
Not a helpful guide as the paths listed almost guarantee that qualifying person would be aware of ways to enter. Would be more interested in the guide "Hot to get a job in HF while being a mainstream web dev who graduated from an unknown uni".
HFT is<p>1. not a growth industry<p>2. the regulators are keen to clamp down on this sort of activity.<p>As such, anyone with the intellectual chops to master HFT, I'd suggest they apply it to greener pastures. Wasn't AdMeld started by former HFT people?