Friday, September 24, 2010

High frequency profits capped at 4 basis points of trading volume

That's about $20 billion on an annual $50 trillion of trading.

The real figure is probably somewhere between $5-10 billion. While this suggests a nice revenue pie, assuming there are 1,000 high frequency traders (and I'd bet there are more), not everyone is making money after technology and support personnel costs.

It's basically in line with the television revenues spun off by the NFL, except there could be more jobs created by high frequency trading than from NFL television, plus the established fact that HFT provides liquidity to everyone else who has an interest in the stock market, which is pretty much everyone with a 401(k), a pension, or a job. We could even extend that to the jobless, who receive unemployment benefits courtesy of the employees and corporations that pay taxes.

Via Dennis Berman.

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