Forbes article on High-Frequency Trading

Wow. 40 racks of servers overseen by traders backed by two separate power substations and 196,000 pounds of batteries and soon, also a 2,000-kilowatt diesel generator.

In this Forbes magazine (yup, still getting it free), this article talks about the equipment, locations and ideas to make money within milliseconds. Some have a direct fiber-optic connection to exchange computers. Why transmit via the internet?

All this equipment is needed to do "high-frequency" trades. To me, it's a bunch of arbitrage. The systems perform 2,000 trades in one second. It tries to catch 0.1 0r 0.01 cent differences, but catches the difference thousands of times each day.

Now the NYSE is exploring renting out space for similar connections directly to its exchange.

Just don't get it wrong 2,000 times in one second.

Click here to read the article.