From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:39:16 -0400

As a totally pragmatic point - if the market is in such free-fall that it
matters that your order got in a 10 thousandth of a second after somebody
else's, instead of before, you probably lost at least 5 to 10 times as much
during the time it took somebody to type the damn order in and hit enter.

Many trades are made programaticcally using formulas and computer
algorithms in response to market activity and other trades of the
same security.

There is no typing involved :)

I don't think anyone in this thread can even pretend to understand how
any of this stuff works, that's why I'm starting to consider this
thread completely pointless.

If the financial folks say they need this stuff, then unless we're
prepared to become experts in financial markets and how the IT stuff
for them are designed and run, we might as well just trust them on
this one.