QUOTE (Tymeaus Jalynsfein @ Sep 25 2013, 03:57 PM)

7 Milliseconds is not enough time to even notice the data, let alone benefit from it. The SR Nanosecond Buyout notwithstanding... *shrug*
High frequency trading companies conduct sometimes thousands of trades
a second. The firm my brother works for just spent several million dollars on a new fiber cable link because it will shave
three milliseconds off their latency for that particular market, giving them a slight edge over their competitors.
Human beings don't even make the trades in those systems anymore. It's entirely automated, computers monitoring stocks for even tiny variances from projected prices, buying and selling at blinding speeds. The humans just make sure the machines are running and come up with the predictive algorithms that drive the trades.
Seven milliseconds is plenty of time for a good chunk of financial damage to happen in today's market, if it happens at the right time.
QUOTE
Markets swung rapidly on the 2 p.m. announcement last Wednesday, with stocks, bonds, and the price of gold all skyrocketing. Somebody placed massive orders for gold futures contracts betting on exactly that outcome within a millisecond or two of 2 p.m. that day -- before the seven milliseconds had passed that would allow the transmission of the information from the Fed's "lock-up" of media organizations who get an early look at the data and the arrival of that information at Chicago's futures markets (that's the time it takes the data to travel at the speed of light. A millisecond is a thousandth of a second). CNBC's Eamon Javers, citing market analysis firm Nanex, estimates that $600 million in assets could have changed hands in that fleeting moment.
And it looks like that's exactly what happened.
-k