Sniper in Mahwah

Many HN readers with an interest in HFT will find the Sniper in Mahwah blog excellent reading. No longer publishing since 2019 as far as I can tell, but it was great while it lasted: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/

If you are really curious, I highly recommend this blog! https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/ (Many people who work in HFT are quite familiar with it.) It's an entertaining and fascinating "view of the inside."

For anyone interested in the topic, I highly recommend Alexandre Laumonier blog - Sniper in Mahwah, especially the older articles. https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/

is this the right link to the blog? I can't imagine more than one blogger using that name: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/ edit: this blog needs to be organized: best post, recommended posts, etc for new readers. What a waste of writing if your new readers can't find good articles. double edit: interesting investigation into HFT companies building microwave towers to cut transmission times to milliseconds from chicago to japan https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/once-upon-a-time-in-th…

https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/ is the best resource I've ever seen for learning about these networks and the rationale behind their construction.

For original, in-depth, on-the-ground, and ongoing commentary on HFT developments in this region I recommend reading the "Sniper in Mahwah" blog(1). It gets a lot more technical, among other things. His posts are regularly featured here on HN(2). (1)https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/ (2)https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sniperinmahwah

For those old enough (in internet timescale) to remember the sniper in Mawa blog https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/

The sniper in mahwah blog is a great reading series on Microwave towers and other information you can glean https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2019/03/26/4-les-moeres-english-v…

Reminds me of the Sniper in Mahwaw (https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/) posts about HFT and microwave towers. I think this is the first in the series: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-par…

Fascinating! I've heard about microwave relay towers used for HFT through an amazing series of blog posts [1], but HF is news to me. Do you have any sources/further reading? I'd be curious what type of licensing that operates under etc. Edit: Turns out there's an article on it on the very same blog [2]! [1] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-par… [2] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part…

The context here is that there are already speculations and some indirect evidence about High-Frequency Traders on the High Frequency band for years (e.g. see [0] from 2018), which made it a naturally candidate. I'm not saying that it's proved, but a candidate worth investigating. [0] Shortwave Trading | Part I | The West Chicago Tower Mystery https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part… [1] SHORTWAVE TRADING | PART II | FAQ AND OTHER CHICAGO AREA SITES https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/shortwave-trading-part… [2] Shortwave Trading | Part III | Fourth Chicago Site, East Coast, Patent, Regulation, and Farmer Kevin Mystery https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/shortwave-trading-part…

Or shortwave between the US and Europe https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part… (I recommend reading the whole series, it's fascinating!)

One of my favourite articles on radio and HFT: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/hft-in-my-backyard-ii/

Sniper in Mahwah [1] details a lot of the structure of HFT trading infrastructure, especially how microwave towers are used. It's a rabbit hole though, he's got tons of stuff on the various ways HFT networks make things work, including their licensing and contracting. [1] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com

There is an interesting series of blog posts about microwave towers used in HFT entitled "HFT in my backyard" at http://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com Several of the individual posts were submitted to HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=HFT%20in%20my%20backyard&sort=byPopu…

It's a tough question because most of what I learned was on the job and I don't really remember books specifically on the topic. It also depends on what product and market you are trading, and on what channels (on exchange, over the counter etc.) I would say it starts with knowing the product you trade and their dynamics inside out. How to make a price for it, what dynamics can change that price etc. It's also a good idea to understand related instruments as typically you would use them for price formation and hedging [1][2]. The second bit is to understand electronic trading infrastructure and the market microstructure such as how orderbooks work, and some trading algos [3] If you're also interested in the infrastructure behind related to low latency, you can read about FPGAs, Exchange co-location etc. There is a fascinating blog on the network infrastructure [4] and the author (Alexandre Laumonier) also wrote a few books on that topic. A lot of market-making is bespoke and proprietary. For example your pricing model, hedging model, etc. It's also constantly changing depending on events (e.g. the elections) or market conditions (correlations changing). But a good place to start is to use some simple pricing model such as making a blend of other prices in other venues, or for derivatives making up the price based on the underlying price and other elements which vary depending on what the derivative is. While you would not be able to gain direct market access to, say,…

Also, from the same blog: Shortwave Trading | Part I | The West Chicago Tower Mystery https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part… SHORTWAVE TRADING | PART II | FAQ AND OTHER CHICAGO AREA SITES https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/shortwave-trading-part…

Without going into anything confidential - we had some of our own hardware, but generally rented capacity from firms like [0]. Some towers were custom built for HFT, some were shared with other types of users. A famous blog post investigating some of the towers as an outsider, at [1], will be of interest to you. If you want to guess where they are, get a globe, find the datacentres where electronic exchanges operate (it's not a secret: Chicago, New Jersey, London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Zurich...) and draw the straightest possible lines between pairs of them. Microwaves don't cross the ocean. [0] https://www.mckay-brothers.com/ [1] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/hft-in-my-backyard-ii/

https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17028892

The question isn't whether satellite links can beat deep-sea cables, it's whether they can beat shortwave. https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part…

Even microwave is slow, they are using shortwave radio for certain signals. Maybe neutrinos are next? https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part…

a bit more info on [1] for your there - its actually a 3 part piece. https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part… Bloomberg picked it up as well if you are into that side of things - https://web.archive.org/web/20180625133148/https://www.bloomberg.com/n…

This has been going on for several years at least. These are some pretty good articles from some amateur sleuths: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part… https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/shortwave-trading-part… https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/shortwave-trading-part… https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/shortwave-trading-part…

You'd be surprised how far HFT companies run their microwave link networks to get better latencies :) https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-par…

More than you can possibly ever want to know about this subject here: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-par…

There are microwave links across Europe: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/hft-in-the-banana-land… There are apparently shortwave links across the Atlantic: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part… https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/shortwave-trading-part… These should have a lower latency than fibre links although the shortwave link will probably have rather a low data rate.

Weirdest thing I've read in a long while. The Author's comments refer to an internet forum thread[0] in German which discusses a German news article from this April.[1]However, it turns out this article is an April Fools text. Just digging deeper into the whole blog you can find something that can only be described as a fanfiction representation of "Flashboys", but in the context of this "Shortwave trading".[2] Is this whole thing a troll? Is this real? What on earth is this? [0]http://funkbasis.de/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=45900 [1]https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Boersenhandel-beschert-Kurzwel… [2]https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2017/06/26/network-effects-part-i…

Speaking of latency: a well calibrated point to point wireless connection is less latency than fiber jumping a bunch of switches. Proof: finance industry's wide use of microwave towers. https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2017/05/lines-radios-and-cables-oh-my.… There was another set of articles describing microwave towers in Europe, quite fascinating. Not sure if this was the one: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-par…

They recently received investment from an HFT firm (used to be independent), https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/the-brothers-get-a-tas…

For those interested in the use of microwave links for HFT, there was an interesting post [1] a while back and some discussion on HN [2] too. [1] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-par… [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8354278