A closer look
High-frequency trading firms spend hundreds of millions of dollars to physically place their computer servers as close to the stock exchange data centers as possible just to gain a microsecond advantage over their competitors. Because electronic trades travel through fiber optic cables at the speed of light, being situated a few miles closer to the main hub literally means your algorithm buys the stock a fraction of a millisecond before the other guy. They even drill straight through actual mountains to lay straighter cables, destroying the natural landscape just to shave milliseconds off data transmission times. We have managed to harness the fundamental laws of physics and the ultimate limits of the universe's speed not to cure diseases or explore the cosmos, but to ensure that some aggressive finance bros in a windowless room can scalp a tenth of a penny on pork belly futures
