Don't doubt it. If I sell something worth $5 for $1, it's guaranteed that I lost $4 and the buyer earned $4, since in the Knight case, that something remained at $5 once people figured out nothing had changed. Moreover, when you earn your salary, you are not creating money. Your employer (or your client) is trading your time for money - for exactly how valuable your work is. If you get paid more, you likely are providing more value or being more productive. Microsoft is no different. They did good choices, and capture revenue from companies and individuals that traded their salary/revenue for Software. Again, money traded hands. The only measure of wealth creation is the real NDP (cousin to real GDP). It means there are more people producing, that people are more productive, or a combination. In the mortgage fiasco, housing skyrocketed. But again, no "money" was created. You can decide your cat is worth $1 billion dollars. And if your neighborhood and everyone you know believes it's a fair price, you'd be a millionaire. But if you find a buyer, you'd have 1 billion, and the buyer will have a dog worth $200, and he'd have lost $1 billion - $200. Again, money traded hands.Bubbles like prime crisis happen to bad causes: there are big commissions, bonuses, and a sense of wealth. But it's just trading.

Now, if we all suddenly agree each tree is worth a billion bucks. Did we just create money? Not really. We just created the illusion of wealth. If you buy a tree and spend $1 billion, you'd have a tree and a paper that says "paid $1 billion". But again, you'd have only traded your $1 billion for a tree. And the illusion can last for as long as the belief is sustained.

You are always trading money for things, and vice versa. And Kight transferred $440 in profits to savvy buyers/sellers.

In the past, in fertile land, men truly worked during 7 or 8 months a year and only during peak seasonal work was work really hard. I know this because my grandfather could spend 4 to 5 months doing whatever he wanted. Today, because of "productivity", you need to work 10 hours a day. The cost of land perfectly is determined by the max productivity of that land. And taxes in many ways also force you to match average productivity. Where I live I pay like $9000 a year in propert taxes. And everthing is 75 more expensive due to sales tax. Not to mention all the other taxes and myriad of things you need to pay just to get even with life, after what comes eating, clothing, etc). So, today, if you want to live a farm style, you better prepare for hard work. Same with everything. Malthus underestimated "pruductivity" but wasn't stupid regarding the bronce law of salaries.

I know little about HFT, HFQ or HFW(hatever). But if an algorithm is many a company worth $5 dollars $1 dollar, it's based on a future dividend pay. So the computer is gifting you privilege to pay $1 for a return that should have cost you $5. Assume the opposite scenario, where it should be woth $5 and and it went to $10. Now suppose you own the stock, which will have a return double of what it should have. (now you need $2 for every %dividend that it shields). So you can sell for $10 what truly was worth only $5. Now suppose you don't own the stock and it's just making its price inflated, Buy a put at $7 with a 6 month expiration and way. But that wont likely happen, they company would sell it's own stock, as would anyone that saw that their $5 turned $10 undeservedly. Or the company itself would float more shares (but who'd buy that). Getting $10 for something worth $5 is good business regardless of who cashes it. And doesn't last long because no HFT or hedge fund would survive by doing that.

Another different thing is naked short selling. I think it should be banned (if it's not done already) Actually, any short selling should be banned (as I understand it). Basically, it can enforce a lower price by generating bearish pressure for a sustained time, until actorrs convince themselves the market knows best. Since the company may have their cost of capital affected by their stock value, it can create situation where the company profitability, market credibility, bargaining power and overall brand may be affected in real life, just because of the short selling effect. This is unethical, wrong and dangerous.

A analogy, suppose you sell lemons, and that after a day, they expire (no longer fresh). You go to the market and offer them for the fair price of $5. No a short seller has this awesome idea of selling lemons they don't have -with the promise to deliver them later, for the exact quantity that you brought to market that day. You had 50 lemons. And the short seller offers $4 for 50 lemons, exhausting demand. The lemon seller will wait until the end of the day, and realize there's not market at $5. Nor $4. Nor $1. And a mistery shopper now offers $0.5 for 50 lemons. The short seller gets the lemon for $0.5, and deliver them for $4 with amazing margin. The one that harvested the lemons gets a huge loss.

This happens to company that typically fond themselves needing to repay debt. If their stock falls significantly (eg. short selling), then a lot of shareholder value is lost because they must issue much more (bringing the price further down). After this is done, it's only been a transfer to the short seller with no additional function or value to the market. A pure brute force game on trading what you don't and have never owned.

Can yu explain a bit or point to a source on how all this works? I literally hate it when options are 20% apart on the bid ask. I can't make a good investment with that spread factored in. It's worst that playing bingo. So if HFT heps narrow the bid/ask then for me it's great. But I don't see what's their gain yet, or how they affect the market.

It could improve, but this hasn't been the norm. Notice it's not an App issue, but a hardware+OS issue. Even Google acknowledges that and ICS Nexus 7 may be the first tablet to deal with the issue. And this is just a work in progress. A test of 5 different low latency apps still show it not ready, but significantly improved.

Now, I do wish the best for Android. I am starting to get so disgusted at Apple since the Samsung trial. It's it becoming a monster company.

The writer of Jasuto Pro also complained about the latency in Android and that there was nothing to be done about it (happened at the OS level).

Maybe there is something more into play. If Netflix is seen in 27 million households now (that an immense market penetration), they become a monopsony. If Disney has this awesome movie, we'll ...it must be awesome...and if they don't sell it toNexflix, maybe I'll buy it. But for all the crap they put, and most of the crap others put, you are either on Nextflix or dead. I can't imagine your satisfaction when you pay $5 to stream bad movies. Two mistakes a months pays your Netflix.

What Netflix is lacking is more money. I'd gladly pay what I pay for DVD to increase selection by 50%. The crucial mistake Netflix did is to make the Streaming version a buffet. If people where happy with 2 at a time, or 3 at a time, or 1, that mean you could see maybe 6 to 18 movies a month. So why isn't streaming like that? 2 a week, 4 a week, 6 a week and 10 per week + an unlimited number of "prime-like", cult, cartoon, non-blockbuster movies to fill in, and TV series. That way, Netflix could agree to be a "collecting agent" to movie studios paying in proportion to viewership, JUST like Apple does for music. What they'd do for us is: negotiate a very fair price, provide content in a very convenient way, simply the movie/tv experience drastically, (finally) get rid of the largest productivity and joy killer i the world - ads.

why not a bid system? if you invent something easy to copy, BEFORE being granted a patetent, you should ask the population how much they would be willing to issue a patent, and what are the approved tariffs. if the requestor and public interest (offer) do not match, then you'd have to do away with the patent...sorry. they'd either have to ask reasonable fees or use contract law (not sell it to anyone unless they enter a contract).. if you can make the same product without ever looking at the product, ie by just thinking "how would would implement a wipe-to unlock mechanism to unlock a phone using a multitouch phone", you should be ok. companies would have no use for good ideas that are trivial to resolve, which are the main damage done to society by patents today (things as scary and ridiculous as the 1-click patent, or swipe to unlock).

This is one of those ideas that seem plausibly correct, to be actually complete wrong. The packaging likely costs Apple $1 or less. and a perfect condition box (original) can sell on ebay for $10 to 30. The box actually make the product cheaper (just sell the box) between $9 to 29.

>I will be ready to accept that MX is the best country in the world as soon as its government eliminates all narco-cartels

It's impossible. USA is the largest buyer and cannot get rid of the cartels either. Same with every other nation. What must happen is for the violence between cartels to stop. Mexico has many other areas of improvement, but I don't think it's failed in any way.

Jokes aside, my only experience with Arisona is having missed a connection because of a delayed flight departing from JFK. What I witnessed was two policemen hitting a woman about 30, and teisting her arm as she was like a high risk to anyone, which she was not. They made her cry of pain, and she even lost one shoe. The two policemen had a look and attitude, that people where looking the scene with horror. I had never in my life seen a woman so normal and so weak be treated like that in public. I literaly refuse to go there even as a connection....that was a sample of how people treat each other there and enough for a lifetime.

Mexico buys about 6% of all US goods and services produced every year, receives 32% of all internation travel from/to US, receives 20 million air travelers (about 10 millon Americans), and has a crime rate for foreigners (ie. Tourists) that makes it safer than Orlando (ak Disney) to them. It's poisex to grow 5% this year and accoring to analysts wl be among the top 5 economies by GDP by 2050. More than a dozen million jobs depend on Mexican demand, and more than 2 million Americans live in the country. Companies like Coca Cola, GM or Walmart have huge operations, their second largest after domestic business. Thousans of firms actually have operations in Mexico, and no plans to close business.

I wish I hadn't posted to mod this up.

In fact, it's extremely difficult to be legally if you are from Mexico unless a corporation brings you. If you are illegal you ha e little rights and have to work hard to survive. On the other hand, Mexico will soon be the largest buyer of US goods, and trade with Mexico represent 13% of the US GDP. If you send back all Mexicans you get more jobs of the kind you don't want, and also upset US largest ally ever. mexico itself buys more than India, China, Russia and Brazil together. But I could easily say that they also buy more than Japan, UK, France, Germany and 10 other EU countries combined. Dozens of states would lose hundreds of thousands of jobs if trade were affected.

Matches my experience. Having a very hard to replace document and dangerous to lose ids makes carring it at all times a serious risk. It shouldn't be a crime to have a copy. If for some reason it becomes absolutely necesary to see the original, it's easy to go for it. I was never asked my papers while I lived In Mexico and I traveled to at least 100 different cities. Same with argentina. I think police should be concerned about crimes, not immigration policy.