NEW YORK, NY April 2 (DPI) – Two op-ed columns today – one in the Wall Street Journal, another in The New York Times – spurred a chorus of often insightful commentary from readers, highlighting the value of comment boards when they are made available.
The columns themselves served their authors’ interests, but they invited the kind of open-forum commentary that gives the internet a good name.
And that’s even after discounting for the medium’s anonymity and usual masquerades.
In one column, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered up, in The New York Times of all places, a plea for peace and reconciliation in his country, which has been riven in recent months by middle-class dissent that his incompetent and Cuban-influenced government cannot seem to contain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/opinion/venezuela-a-call-for-peace.html
The comment board that followed contains its share of suspect commentary, but a good number reminded readers that Maduro and his successor Chavista regime show little commitment to a democratic, pluralistic state with independent institutions.
Most recommended reply:
Mr. Maduro is given space to write a highly disingenuous article here.
He talks about democracy in a country where his government has shut down any TV and radio station that broadcasts in opposition to his policies. He has taken away the right for merchants to charge a profitable price for their goods, he has instituted money controls that have created shortages of goods, thrown in jail protesters, and the government has become unaccountable to anyone except him and his hired goons.
He has made unsubstantiated charges against American diplomats, jailed reporters, or had them deported, and even murdered, and he talks about democracy. We see here the ultimate in hypocrisy, self delusion, just plain lying, and all the characteristics of other totalitarians.
His government is going to fail, but there will be bloodshed before it does. His supporters, the poor who think they have noting to lose, will eventually suffer even more, as the educated and better off, flee to more democratic countries.
We thought the saw the last of these South American satraps, but they keep reappearing, at various intervals. Venezuela is becoming another banana republic, while Maduro tries to make it another Cuba.
Second highest recommended:
I am a Venezuelan in the USA and I feel proud of having been able to stay objective when analyzing Venezuelan problems. I am dismayed at the series of lies presented here. There s no democracy in Venezuela: there is no separation of powers, there is no independent Supreme Court, there is no Central Bank, no independent general attorney. Democratically elected mayors and governors get demoted, imprisoned, or their budgets removed without due course. In addition, the economy is in ruins, the oil industry has been dismantled (not even ranked by international organizations). The health service is in in shambles. Cuban doctors in ppor neighborhoods do not make it for a comprehensive health care system. Malaria and tuberculosis (once controlled diseases) are again in the rise. This is not about the 1% against the 99%, that is a myth; this is about the >50% opposition against an repressive government. Winning elections does not equate to democracy. Examples: North Korea and Cuba. Democracy means separation of powers, freedom of expression, right to live a life without the daily fear of being victim of crime, and many more things that this current Venezuelan government does not provide. I invite you to watch the videos of motorized groups along government forces terrorizing unarmed civilians, and learn about the many injured by government forces and the many more detained. Reader, do your homework and get the facts before you fall for Mr. Maduro’s pathetic tale.
The second column, in The WSJ today, is from executives who lead a Wall Street asset management firm. They defend so-called high-frequency trading, in the wake of the release of Michael Lewis’s book, Flash Boys, which asserts that such trading reflects a “rigged” market.
The column’s narrative – the authors claim to play no role in HFT – is laden with contradictory comments.
Our firm, AQR Capital Management, is an institutional investor, primarily managing long-term investment strategies. We do not engage in high-frequency trading strategies. Here is where our interest lies: What is good for us is lower trading costs because it translates into better investment performance and happier clients, which makes our business slightly more valuable.
On the one hand they claim to be long-term investors – which on its face doesn’t involve daily frequent trading — the authors profess to value the lower transaction costs and liquidity that HFTs allegedly bring to the stock markets. But there’s little evidence that the presence of HFTs lowers transaction costs or improves execution.
The executives too suggest that market complexity can only be understood by Wall Street experts. Another paragraph:
Few professionals completely understand the details of market microstructure. Rather, when someone has a strong opinion about the subject, it’s likely to be what they want you to believe, not what they know.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303978304579475102237652362
Readers examined and debated the central points: Is Michael Lewis setting up a straw man to sell books? Is HFT simply a less-offensive form of illegal front-running? Or is HFT beneficial to the market, by actually enhancing market liquidity?
Among the most recommended by readers:
(10 Recs) HFT does no such thing as adding liquidity. It is phantom liquidity, not real. It does not reduce spreads. It actually, slightly, increases execution prices.
(7 Recs) The takeaway here. Don’t invest with AQR. Why are there 34 different types of orders on Arcs (NYSE)? 30 types of orders on Bats? And combinations on all these orders that morph the # of types of orders into the thousands. With names like “Hide and slide”. And these “markets” that HFT’s claim to make? Try to hit them on their posted bid or offer and it magically fades or goes away. They are allowed to post bogus markets to feel out interest and cancel their bid/offer before execution. That is not liquidity. When you can write an algo to auto fade when you are about to get hit because you are paying the NYSE for space on their servers and you have a speed advantage as a result, that is not liquidity. I don’t know about you but last time I was on my personal trading account I didn’t see 30+ different order types I could enter. If it’s so great for “main street” why don’t I have those options? With almost $100b in assets I’m surprised AQR is this obtuse.
The comment board still had its share of defenders of High Frequency Trading, but as usual it’s hard to say how much of those comments were simply trumped up, crafted by paid pumpers, who are common on Wall Street to begin with.
But overall, the comment boards ended up containing information more insightful and less self-serving than the columns themselves.