Southeastern Asset Management's Mason Hawkins Levels High Frequency Trading

Southeastern Asset Management, the manager of the legendary Longleaf family of mutual funds, put together a scathing analysis of high frequency trading (HFT), debunking the myth of its "benefits" to market participants. This was assembled and presented by Southeastern founder O. Mason Hawkins and his team for and to Luis Angular of the SEC.

Must read.

2010-06 Southeastern to SEC Re HFT
[HT: Black Ball]

Liberty Quote Of The Day: Cliff Asness

Cliff Asness is known for his role as the founder and intellectual leader of investment firm, AQR Capital. His below quote is directed at The Obama Administration's efforts to nationalize healthcare and establish the provision of health care services as a right.

From TILB's mouth to Asness's fingers:

"Listing rights generally involves enumerating things you may do without interference (the right to free speech) or may not be done to you without your permission (illegal search and seizure, loud boy-band music in public places). They are protections, not gifts of material goods. Material goods and services must be taken from others, or provided by their labor, so if you believe you have an absolute right to them, and others don't choose to provide it to you, you then have a 'right' to steal from them. But what about their far more fundamental right not to be robbed?"

- Cliff Asness

Amen.

We add below this video clip which neatly summarizes our view of The Administration's efforts on so many fronts:



Don't fight it. Simply hand your (formerly) free will over to The Administration and their collection of czars. Why think for yourself when silver tongued aggressors are willing to think for you?

Ah, sweet sweet mindless freedom...

[HT: LB]

Goldman Sachs Conspiracy Theories Begin To Manifest In Reality

The folks over at Zero Hedge are in the midst of either going down the gutter of the lunatic fringe into Alice's rabbit hole or they are in the midst of breaking an industrial espionage case at Goldman Sachs. This ties in with severa prior datapoints that they have been tracking, including the cessation of high frequency trade reporting by the NYSE (a ranking which Goldman has completely dominated) and further ties into a trading scandal Matt Goldstein at Reuters is breaking.

Somewhere, a crazy Congresswoman named Maxine Waters is smiling...