The ostensible motivation for the existence of share trading -- and for the existence of the limited-liability company in the first place, where share-holders are shielded from paying up (or being prosecuted) for the shit their property causes -- is economic efficiency. This whole system came to be, and is allowed to continue to exist, because it is allegedly a net boon to society and the economy as a whole. No, not your little game of Microsecond Monopoly -- the real economy, with real capitalism (https://en.wikipedia...wiki/Real_capital), where trading in shares is not an end in itself but just a means of measuring the value of the actual business the stock is more or less tenuously related to.

So, tell me: How much do you think the actual value of the goods-on-hand, real estate and equipment, "human resources", plans and ideas in R&D, market position and "mindshare"... All the real and actual "value" of a share, how much does that fluctuate in a microsecond, d'yathink? Or, looking at it from another angle: For each of your bids, how much computing resources do you devote to computing the current or future value of each of these factors? A third, perhaps this is the satellite view: How well does your little game reflect the real world economy?

The answer to all three: None what-so-fucking ever, of course. Which wouldn't really be a problem... If only you played your Microsecond Monopoly with actual Monopoly money.

The problem is, of course, that you don't. You play with actual money, and in playing with it, you also fuck around with it. It's all connected: Corporate stock, pork belly futures, US or other national bonds, sub-prime mortgages... Lehman and Goldman Sachs and Bank of America; it's all just grist for the financial mill, and financial transactions of which your particular Microsecond Monopoly is but one part positively dwarf the real-world economy -- dwarf it, and occasionally crush it (like, for instance, they've been doing since 2008 and still are).

The whole world economic system is in dire need of thorough reform, because it has gone meta up its own arse: Having the very unit of measure goods are valued in -- i.e, money -- itself become the main trading good, that just has to distort the whole system way out of shape. It's like having your butcher and grocer deal not just in meat and eggs and apples, but in pounds and dozens too. How is anyone going to know what the price ofa steak means, when the value of the units you weigh it in are also fluctuating due to trade in them?!? The world is fucked-up, and that Microsecond Monopoly you're about to start working in is a not insignificant part of the problem.

So, on a personal level I still of course wish you the best of luck with your new job and all... But when you do that job, please do have the decency to be at least a little ashamed of how you make your living.

Also, of course: You bastard!

(But that's mostly just envy.)