Monday, April 13, 2015

Are Free Range Kids bad?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/free-range-kids-and-our-parenting-police-state/2015/04/13/42c30336-e1df-11e4-905f-cc896d379a32_story.html

"The Silver Spring siblings were about 2 1/2 blocks from their home Sunday when Montgomery County police got a call reporting them — gasp — playing alone.
'The police coerced our children into the back of a patrol car and kept them trapped there for three hours, without notifying us, before bringing them to the Crisis Center, and holding them there without dinner for another two and a half hours,' their mom, Danielle Meitiv, said to her Facebook friends. 'We finally got home at 11 pm and the kids slept in our room because we were all exhausted and terrified'.”

Could the police be sued for kidnapping?  As I recall my childhood, the main rule was to be home at a certain time.  We ranged far and wide, but kept to that one rule.

Friday, April 10, 2015

High-frequency trading is ruining the stock market

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32246655

"Mr Lewis says the major question is how to structure markets for stocks and shares as well as bonds and currencies as computers slowly and inexorably take over from human traders.
Martin Wheatley, the head of the markets watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority, has said that high-frequency trading now accounts for 30% of business on the UK equity market. In America it is higher.
Mr Lewis says that it is unclear - certainly in the US at least - whether the regulators are going to do anything about what he says is such a major problem.
One reason, he argues, is the "revolving door" between the Wall Street banks and firms engaged in high-frequency trading and the regulators themselves. A 'cosy club' has grown up, he says.
But, although that may be the case, Mr Lewis actually argues that the story of Flash Boys is one of hope.
And that's because the main witness in his book, Brad Katsuyama, a trader at the Royal Bank of Canada, has set up an exchange called IEX which seeks to eliminate 'predatory opportunities created by speed'."

I have mostly left the stock market because of stuff like this.