The location in the petition is approx. 41.82907908782928, -88.4940281199101, which is about 16 miles (27 km) from the center coordinate of the TDOA map (41.60, -88.60). Not bad given the caveat of "the above location is likely accurate to only a few 10s of km at best."
The e-mail address in the petition has the domain tower-research.com, which is a high-frequency trading firm.
The only thing I'm confused about is that the zoning petition was discussed at the meeting on Dec 8th 2020. If it was approved, it seems remarkably fast to build a tower given that the article was from Dec 15th.
For HFT purposes, it's hard to hide an intercontinental range HF antenna, particularly a directional one. I know at least 3 locations not far from the illinois CME datacenter, out in some fields, with huge yagi-uda antennas aimed at London and tokyo.
I'm curious as to UK end of the link now. I would guess somewhere on the hills around London to get line of sight for a microwave link down to the city.
Having just checked the Ofcom Spectrum Information System [0], it does not appear that they could have a transmitter for the opposite direction due to the frequency allocation to MoD and Amateur. Maybe they have a contract with the shortwave broadcasters to embed trading data into their broadcasts.
> For HFT purposes, it's hard to hide an intercontinental range HF antenna, particularly a directional one. I know at least 3 locations not far from the illinois CME datacenter, out in some fields, with huge yagi-uda antennas aimed at London and tokyo.
ARRL mentioned this stuff in June 2018, then crickets.
The second link on ka7oei's page, a 2018 discussion among hams, names a few of the perps' ID's. It said 'WJ2XGD' was the only one licensed on 20m.[0] Quote: 'Emission bandwidth shall not extend beyond the bandlimits' = 14-14.99.
They're -not- required to ID themselves [Section 5.115] (an eyebrow-raiser).[1]
Chicago to London one way is around 35ms over fibre but that could be down to 21ms over the air like this.
That signal is only about 10-15khz wide[1] from that diagram. That’s not a whole lot of data transfer ability, measured in the low kbps range rather than mbps. Very low kbps when you add in error correction.
We are moving out of / have left the solar minimum so the MUF is usually well above the 20 metre band each day now so going forward, it might be a good capability to have while it lasts for the next 8 years or so.
[1] I don’t know what scale division the ticks at the top represent but the SSB signals to the left would be up to around 3khz wide.
One does not need a lot of bandwidth to trade successfully. In fact, a limited number of signals agreed upon ahead of time is enough. E.g. signal “A” could mean “buy 10 contracts”, signal “B” - “sell 100 contracts”, etc. And you can of course wrap 256 such signals into one byte. So transmitting a single byte at an opportune time let’s you control your trading on the other continent in a quite precise fashion. If you make such transmission, say, 10 times per day your bandwidth utilization is technically 10 bytes per day or about 0.001 bps - yet you can make a ton of money.
I have no real opinion on HFT, but I think its outrageous the FCC allows people to interfere with other services like this. Let them use point-to-point microwave relays or fiber cables
Do exchanges like HF traders? I know HF traders themselves justify their own existence by claiming they provide liquidity to the markets, but I've always just sort-of rolled my eyes at that.
They only extract value and provide none, in my opinion, tax the profits heavily. I think every exchange should pad each order by a random number between 0 and 250ms, it would take care of it. The company profiled in this video add lag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8BcCLLX4N4
Exchanges generally like (and provide incentives to) orders that add liquidity, which means orders that do not execute immediately. HFT orders are generally intended to not execute immediately, so exchanges would tend to like them. Of course, HFT also usually pays higher connection fees to get closer to the exchange, which probably doesn't hurt their relations with the exchange.
The dark pools that HFT firms setup to trade with retail investors are probably less enjoyed by the exchanges, but at the same time, it does reduce load at the exchange, so maybe it's mixed because it reduces the exchanges' income from commissions, but also reduces their expense from operations.
Padding orders by a random amount doesn't really discourage racing to get their first; if it's a uniform random, across all orders, you still want to get there first, which means you still want to get your order there quickly; and depending on implementation, you might break your order up into many smaller orders, so that some of them get there with less delay. If you wanted to disincentivize speed, what you really want to do is group orders that arrive in a given interval and treat them as arriving at the same time; you could do that with fixed intervals (1 minute, 1 second, 100 ms, whatever) or adaptive intervals based on the number of orders over the last interval, or randomly, if you like random.
From what I've seen from selling employer stock over the years, the commissions have gone down (to zero), and the bid/offer spreads have gone down, and both are due to HFT firms, so as far as I can see, HFT is helping me. I can't say I've noticed a difference in execution speed, trading always seemed pretty fast, as long as I was able to setup the order via the browser.
My understanding is that HFTs function in a complete race to the bottom, with the only profitable activity being to trade faster and with slightly faster information than the next HFT. There is no secret sauce to keep them from eating each other as the costs to create a new HFT are not all that high vs. the profit opportunity of shaving a few percent off the commissions of the dominant trading system. Faster links and faster trades between exchanges mean they carry less risk when carrying out arbitrage (while also lowering the amount of arbitrage available).
The fact they made crazy profits initially is more of an artifact that they were competing against humans rather than other automated systems. In a few years we may see them reach the point of diminishing returns where all exchanges share a common pool of liquidity that adapts in a few millis to new information.
I'm sure the exchanges like the buckets of money that HFTs pay them, even on their discounted commission fees. There's also billions in industry just around supporting HFTs, including FPGAs, silicon fab, networking equipment, etc. The cost to society of killing HFTs would probably be fairly large and imo the drawbacks are mostly minor.
HFT does enhance liquidity and price discovery. The advantage to being "first" to trade is only there when multiple bidders are issuing orders at the exact same price point, and this is easily addressed by reducing minimum tick size so that price choices will just naturally disperse (as opposed to all being quantized at the same value).
The liquidity argument is a good one IMO. If you did not have participants willing to arbitrage fractions of a cent per share, it could be really difficult to get the ends to meet on a daily basis for things that arent traded with as much volume as monsters like TSLA/AMD/et. al.
The use of microwave links is just a natural consequence of competition within the HFT space. It might be reasonable to apply a minimum latency bound across the board as some participants have already, but I argue this would inhibit much of the innovation that got us to this point to start with. Being able to quickly clear a trade on thinly-traded securities is a wonderful thing for all involved. Capital not locked up in limit orders is more useful to humanity (in most cases).
HF traders are big data consumers and they _have_ to have all the orderbook daa, so they're big customers of exchanges. They also pay for stuff like colocation.
Many exchanges also provide rebates for liquidty providing orders, which HF traders are incentivised to use.
One notable exception is the Investors Exchange (IEX), are vocally anti-HF.
Why suspect HFTs over other potential interfering applications? Could be anything, and unless I missed something, TFA doesn't show any evidence that the usage is HFT-motivated
The Chicago mercantile exchange is close to the center of the transmission. There are previous instances of HFT chasing low latency between Chicago and NYC, so it seems plausible this is something similar.
It is not proof of course. Plenty of other things could be happening in Chicago.
Wouldn't a high frequency trader be building point to point links and thus benefit hugely from highly directional antennas? Seems like that would help with the interference quite a bit.
At that power any spill would still be a very strong signal.
Directional antennas are like gun silencers. They cause the signal to be many times weaker and it seems a lot until you figure out that the receiver works on a log scale and whatever is left is still registered as a strong signal.
A point to point link from Chicago to NYC would require many hops along the way, which is what they have with microwave today. The whole point of experimenting with the 20 meter band is to eliminate those hops.
>What this means is that some entities are experimenting with the use of the HF bands for the most direct, point-to-point means of conveying this information possible.
Interesting that this is now being done with HF bands. For several years, however, this has already been done through the use of lasers (although at a far greater cost).
>Last year (2013), Anova completed a laser network link between the London and Frankfurt stock exchanges, and now, it seems the company is nearing completion on a similar laser network between the NYSE and NASDAQ data centers in Mahwah and Carteret, New Jersey.
Not sure I understand the point of using that band past amateur radio. Around 20m band is terrible for point to point communications. The antennas are huge, the bandwidth is low, the noise floor is really high and it’s prone to just about every annoying atmospheric condition possible.
Bandwidth doesn't need to be huge for HFT. If you can send a message saying "there was a big upward movement in the price of instrument X", that's enough to be incredibly valuable if it gets to the other end before anyone else knows about it. There might only be a few dozen instruments you're interested in, and a few events for each one, so being able to send a single byte could be enough.
Obviously, more bandwidth is useful, because you can send more details, and make better decisions at the receiving end. But most of the value is in getting a small message there fast.
Fermilab is very close to the CME data center and is focused on neutrino research now, maybe a good opportunity for a partnership for some extra funding...
...Maybe one day they'll have quantum entangled particles and they'll be able to do spooky things at a distance and communicate instantly?
I don't pretend to understand the physics, but sounds like it would be interesting... if it could work.
Perhaps then Radio Amateurs would become Amateur Tanglers?
There was speculation Starlink could be used for HFT once it gets laser links, but this would even beat that since you don't need to travel up and down an extra 500 miles, plus any buffering in the satellites. Starlink would have more bandwidth, but you probably don't need much for HFT.
Ham radio transmissions are not allowed to be encrypted per FAR 97.113(4). [1]
I suspect this is also a violation of FAR 97.113(3) "Communications in which the station licensee or control operator has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer"
[+] [-] vgrigorescu|5 years ago|reply
Using the update from the bottom of the page:
> … and M-Wave is authorized the 14-14.99 MHz at 16 kW.
I found this petition from M-Wave Networks, LLC for permission to build 4 towers in Kane County, Illinois: https://www.countyofkane.org/FDER/Zoning%20Petitions%20Docum...
The location in the petition is approx. 41.82907908782928, -88.4940281199101, which is about 16 miles (27 km) from the center coordinate of the TDOA map (41.60, -88.60). Not bad given the caveat of "the above location is likely accurate to only a few 10s of km at best."
The e-mail address in the petition has the domain tower-research.com, which is a high-frequency trading firm.
The only thing I'm confused about is that the zoning petition was discussed at the meeting on Dec 8th 2020. If it was approved, it seems remarkably fast to build a tower given that the article was from Dec 15th.
[+] [-] tlrobinson|5 years ago|reply
It makes sense they moved quickly, since there's a limited time period where they'd have this advantage over other firms which set up similar systems.
[+] [-] nosmokewhereiam|5 years ago|reply
- Delmarva Broadband is authorized 14.35-14.99 MHz at 186 kW. Contact is a law office in DC. See https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.htm
- … and M-Wave is authorized the 14-14.99 MHz at 16 kW. See https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.htm
[+] [-] Animats|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikewarot|5 years ago|reply
https://goo.gl/maps/boqMG4aCrShatHtq8
[+] [-] topspin|5 years ago|reply
So much for that hobby.
Where were those links supposed to go anyhow?
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|5 years ago|reply
ref: https://www.google.com/maps/place/41°36'00.0"N+88°36'00.0"W/
ref: https://splinternews.com/how-an-internet-mapping-glitch-turn...
[+] [-] topspin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] widforss|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PoachedSausage|5 years ago|reply
Having just checked the Ofcom Spectrum Information System [0], it does not appear that they could have a transmitter for the opposite direction due to the frequency allocation to MoD and Amateur. Maybe they have a contract with the shortwave broadcasters to embed trading data into their broadcasts.
[0] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/information/spectrum-infor...
[+] [-] cl0ckt0wer|5 years ago|reply
They're probably aimed somewhere above and in between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skywave
[+] [-] ardy42|5 years ago|reply
Got any pictures?
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|5 years ago|reply
The second link on ka7oei's page, a 2018 discussion among hams, names a few of the perps' ID's. It said 'WJ2XGD' was the only one licensed on 20m.[0] Quote: 'Emission bandwidth shall not extend beyond the bandlimits' = 14-14.99.
They're -not- required to ID themselves [Section 5.115] (an eyebrow-raiser).[1]
[0] https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=204018&x=. [License to M-Wave Networks LLC, Illinois]
[1] https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/ham-radio-mentioned...
This long, archived page about HFT tech briefly considers the HF option considerations (search for 'HAM radio')
[2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20171012010437/https://meanderfu...]
[+] [-] CraigJPerry|5 years ago|reply
That signal is only about 10-15khz wide[1] from that diagram. That’s not a whole lot of data transfer ability, measured in the low kbps range rather than mbps. Very low kbps when you add in error correction.
We are moving out of / have left the solar minimum so the MUF is usually well above the 20 metre band each day now so going forward, it might be a good capability to have while it lasts for the next 8 years or so.
[1] I don’t know what scale division the ticks at the top represent but the SSB signals to the left would be up to around 3khz wide.
[+] [-] raviolo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fortran77|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrea|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sireat|5 years ago|reply
I wonder if Dumas was inspired by Blanc brothers.
[+] [-] bigmattystyles|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toast0|5 years ago|reply
The dark pools that HFT firms setup to trade with retail investors are probably less enjoyed by the exchanges, but at the same time, it does reduce load at the exchange, so maybe it's mixed because it reduces the exchanges' income from commissions, but also reduces their expense from operations.
Padding orders by a random amount doesn't really discourage racing to get their first; if it's a uniform random, across all orders, you still want to get there first, which means you still want to get your order there quickly; and depending on implementation, you might break your order up into many smaller orders, so that some of them get there with less delay. If you wanted to disincentivize speed, what you really want to do is group orders that arrive in a given interval and treat them as arriving at the same time; you could do that with fixed intervals (1 minute, 1 second, 100 ms, whatever) or adaptive intervals based on the number of orders over the last interval, or randomly, if you like random.
From what I've seen from selling employer stock over the years, the commissions have gone down (to zero), and the bid/offer spreads have gone down, and both are due to HFT firms, so as far as I can see, HFT is helping me. I can't say I've noticed a difference in execution speed, trading always seemed pretty fast, as long as I was able to setup the order via the browser.
[+] [-] lumost|5 years ago|reply
The fact they made crazy profits initially is more of an artifact that they were competing against humans rather than other automated systems. In a few years we may see them reach the point of diminishing returns where all exchanges share a common pool of liquidity that adapts in a few millis to new information.
[+] [-] cryptofistMonk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zozbot234|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bob1029|5 years ago|reply
The liquidity argument is a good one IMO. If you did not have participants willing to arbitrage fractions of a cent per share, it could be really difficult to get the ends to meet on a daily basis for things that arent traded with as much volume as monsters like TSLA/AMD/et. al.
The use of microwave links is just a natural consequence of competition within the HFT space. It might be reasonable to apply a minimum latency bound across the board as some participants have already, but I argue this would inhibit much of the innovation that got us to this point to start with. Being able to quickly clear a trade on thinly-traded securities is a wonderful thing for all involved. Capital not locked up in limit orders is more useful to humanity (in most cases).
[+] [-] maest|5 years ago|reply
HF traders are big data consumers and they _have_ to have all the orderbook daa, so they're big customers of exchanges. They also pay for stuff like colocation.
Many exchanges also provide rebates for liquidty providing orders, which HF traders are incentivised to use.
One notable exception is the Investors Exchange (IEX), are vocally anti-HF.
[+] [-] jimbob45|5 years ago|reply
I like your idea though.
[+] [-] ridaj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] advisedwang|5 years ago|reply
It is not proof of course. Plenty of other things could be happening in Chicago.
[+] [-] mikewarot|5 years ago|reply
How can we:
1> receive and regenerate the source bit stream
2> use that to exactly recreate the transmitted signal
3> synchronized with that signal, and
4> then use it to cancel out the interference?
[+] [-] raviolo|5 years ago|reply
https://www.raft-tech.com/
[+] [-] zymhan|5 years ago|reply
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-17/companies...
[+] [-] zsellera|5 years ago|reply
I think the source is rather an unintentional radiator in this case.
[+] [-] intrepidhero|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmilcin|5 years ago|reply
Directional antennas are like gun silencers. They cause the signal to be many times weaker and it seems a lot until you figure out that the receiver works on a log scale and whatever is left is still registered as a strong signal.
[+] [-] jaywalk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cozzyd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StanislavPetrov|5 years ago|reply
Interesting that this is now being done with HF bands. For several years, however, this has already been done through the use of lasers (although at a far greater cost).
>Last year (2013), Anova completed a laser network link between the London and Frankfurt stock exchanges, and now, it seems the company is nearing completion on a similar laser network between the NYSE and NASDAQ data centers in Mahwah and Carteret, New Jersey.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/176551-new-laser-network...
[+] [-] uncledave|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twic|5 years ago|reply
Obviously, more bandwidth is useful, because you can send more details, and make better decisions at the receiving end. But most of the value is in getting a small message there fast.
[+] [-] Animats|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] souprock|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] retzkek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kreelman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rlt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nomercy400|5 years ago|reply
Can you mitm?
[+] [-] davidwihl|5 years ago|reply
I suspect this is also a violation of FAR 97.113(3) "Communications in which the station licensee or control operator has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer"
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=d4b3c60d2d60000a14...