Interesting, and I applaud Guggenheim and other pioneers embracing the future of Quantum computer. Before quantum is ready, I think it’ll be very good already if people can consider tuning their computer’s performance with bloom filter, LSM tree, and other data modeling/ structure techniques.

I'm not sure that I follow your reasoning here Marcos, though maybe that's the BBC's fault?!

Assuming for the moment that quantum computing does in actual fact ultimately deliver "better forecasting", how will that in turn "reduce the prevalence of high-frequency trading"?

Don't understand either Jim

I have to say I am unclear as well.

I agree, Scott. Let's assume quantum computing or any computing innovation enters the market, who will capitalize on it? HFTs who have built businesses around microstructure forecasting and have evolved over several iterations of previous Moore's law to be the fastest around or will investors who feel robbed by HFT somehow just ascertain these better forecasts than the HFTs using comparable equipment? Seems implausible to me...

All indicators and EA do mistakes. thats way i am trading manually .

Or... It may push the hft race into the femtosecond space...

HFT is a controversial topic and I am not on either side of the fence. Let me draw an analogy here. Back in the days when plane was first design to fulfill the human dream of flying. Plane designers worked tenaciously to improve the aerodynamics in making lighter and faster planes with honorable intents. However would the designers ever know their well-designed planes would turn into fighter jets during the World War II? The speed isn’t a problem but those abusers with evil thoughts are.

Makes no sense to me whatsoever--- Most likely it will be the HFT traders that use quantum computers.. Is the author qualified to comment on this subject..

@Jenny - Marcos has written a variety of academic treatises on market microstructure and such like:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=434076

Does that make him "qualified to comment on this subject" in your opinion?

Nonetheless I do wish he would pop back in here to explain himself!

I don't see how quantum computing can reduce the prevelance of HFT. If anything, it will be a tool used to disadvatage the smaller firms and investors who are disadvataged by both inferior computing speed and data transfer rates to their broker or directly to the exchange.

Dr. Saif Altameemi EAs and algos provide rational consistency in placing/monitoring trades. Failure is difficult to achieve if the system was robust from the start. Easy to audit if something does fail. Manual trading has many more variables, including increased chance of human error. It is no coincidence that some hedge funds and investors will only consider 100% algos.

If you are trading manually, unless you are trading large lots, and as a position trader. you are unlikely to have any significant edge over a market maker or news trader who is at least 80-90% auto and of course 100% auto with human oversight is the better case.

Not sure why you would be in a group that discusses automated trading as a core concept and insist on manual trading without elaborating on the specifics of what parts are manual and why you refuse to automate.

Jon/Saif - I'm not sure what any of that has got to do with quantum computing and/or HFT?

You may ask if there may be unfair advantages in HFT, then I would say: how others would compete with the institutional investors when they are no match in size, and what if they can’t even use speed?!

Technology itself isn’t limited to those who have the resources. Think about how Thomas Peterffy, founder of Interactive Brokers, contended against the big players when he was just a little guy. Today’s open source technologies and Hadoop can run on cheap computers on a distributed platform, which is indeed a revolution against the rich who uses Super-computer (Oracle??). IMHO, I advocate for more people to learn how to tune their computers, like how some people may tune up their cars.

I am in risk and compliance, the only thing I want to do is to enable middle-office to match-up against the front-office, if HFT aren’t going away anytime soon. To me, it boils down to real-time preventive risk management to stop the prohibited before the violators stop you!

HFT competition will survive, we will still need interpretation of quantum computer results/probabilities to determine trade behavior. Quantum computing has the promise of learning/modelling the 'system' but also introduces more problems that have to be addressed by our quants.

Whilst quantum computing may accelerate modelling / analysis, venues still operate in a deterministic manner - so unless there's a radical shake up on how venues operate, speed of execution will still be relevant; how relevant may be a factor of the power of quantum approaches to model the impacts of that latency..

For the above references, please see http://ssrn.com/abstract=2708678. For additional information on financial supercomputing, please see www.QuantResearch.org.

Although Quantum computers will take many more years, as far as HFT is concerned, Quantum computers might replace the HFT players i.e. one HFT player being replaced by another HFT player because of better speed and computing power but it will not reduce prevalence of HFT itself.