Streetwise Professor

There was another hearing on HFT on Capitol Hill today, in the Senate. The best way to summarize it was that it reminded me of an evening at the local bookstore, with authors reading selections from their books.

Two examples suffice. Citadel’s Ken Griffin (whom I called out for talking his book on Frankendodd years ago) heavily criticized dark pools, and called for much heavier regulation of them. But he sang the praises of purchased order flow, and warned against any regulation of it.

So, go out on a limb and bet that (a) Citadel does not operate a dark pool, and (b) Citadel is one of the biggest purchasers of order flow, and you’ll be a winner!

The intellectually respectable case against dark pools and payment for order flow is the same. Both “cream skim” uninformed orders from the exchanges, leaving the exchange order flow more informed (i.e., more toxic), thereby reducing exchange liquidity by increasing adverse selection costs. I’m not saying that I agree with this case, but I do recognize that it is at least grounded in economics, and that an intellectually consistent critic of dark pools would also criticize purchased order flow.

But some people have books to sell.

The other example is Jeffrey Sprecher of ICE, which owns and operates the NYSE. Sprecher lamented the fragmentation of the equity markets, and praised the lack of fragmentation of futures markets. But he went further. He said that futures markets were competitive and not fragmented.

Tell me another one.

Yes, there is limited head-to-head competition in some futures contracts, such as WTI and Brent. But these are the exceptions, not the rule. Futures exchanges do not compete head to head in any other major contract. Execution in the equity market is far more competitive than in the futures market. Multiple equities exchanges compete vigorously, and the socialization of order flow due to RegNMS makes that competition possible. This is why the equities exchange business is low margin, and not very profitable. Futures exchanges own their order flow, and since liquidity attracts liquidity, one exchange tends to dominate trading in a particular instrument. So yes, futures markets are not fragmented, but no, they are not competitive. These things go together, regardless of what Sprecher says.  He wants to go back to the day when the NYSE was the dominant exchange and its members earned huge rents. That requires undoing a lot of what is in RegNMS.

Those were some of the gems from the witness side of the table. From the questioner side, we were treated to another display of Elizabeth Warren’s arrogant ignorance and idiocy. The scary thought is that the left views her as the next Obama who will deny Hillary and vault to the presidency. God save us.

Overall the hearing demonstrated what I’ve been saying for years. Market structure, and the regulations that drive market structure, have huge distributive effects. Everybody says that they are in favor of efficient markets, but I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that their definition of what is efficient happens to correspond with what benefits their firms. The nature of securities/derivatives trading creates rents. The battle over market structure is a classic rent seeking struggle. In rent seeking struggles, everybody reads out of their books. Everybody.