<p>Barclays agreed to pay a $150mln fine as the result of an investigation into their exploiting a milliseconds long lag between placing and executing orders that was used to hurt their own clients. Given that 70% of online trades are placed by computers, and there are all kinds of such exploits possible/being done, there is no level playing field, esp. for us (well, unless Jester owns a Cray computer and is keeping it a secret.) Funny true story -  a friend of mine deep in the business told me - A company in Chicago had built a 'pipeline' to the NYSE that was marginally faster than any other electronic means of information transportation. They approached a large  company (think maybe a hedge fund, don't recall) to sell them access to this, and said it would cost $10 mln. The company execs were stunned, thinking this was a ridiculous price for what probably was a milliseconds advantage. When they figured it out, they came back and said they'd pay the $10mln - but only if the company doubled their price going forward to $20 mln, since they wanted to erect a higher cost barrier to access for their competitors. I always wonder if, as per Barclays, the fine ever match up with what they raked in illegally. Several months back the FCC slapped ATT with a $100mln fine for consumer fraud: i.e., advertising 'unlimited data' to customers for a price, but throttling speeds down to 2G when they exceeded a certain GB limit, without ever informing their customers. Given that ATT bought DirectTV for ~$48bln, and that cheating of customers must've had a large positive $ impact, what disincentive to lie is $100mln?</p>