Ham Radio Mentioned Prominently In High-Frequency Trading Story

According to this CQ Contest forum thread, it appears the mystery has been probably solved and the station has QSY or QRT.

BLAME CANADA!

*From:* Ben Antanaitis - WB2RHM <wb2rhm@wb2rhm.com>
*Date:* Saturday, February 02, 2019 10:36 AM
*To:* cq-contest@contesting.com
*Subject:* [CQ-Contest] 20m Intruder
All,

I sent a question about the 'bogey' signal over to some of the
'numbers stations', SDR signal analysis, Mil-Comms monitoring type of
groups, yesterday.

I got a reply from one of the groups. That group looked at the signal,
and recorded it for 'examination, identification, & decoding'
attempts. The result that came back from them said that this
signal appeared to be 'a known Canadian Navy signal type and was in
STANAG 4285 and appears like Thales 3000 modems' No way to tell if
this was a stationary transmitter or a 'mobile' (water or air).

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/stanag-4285-decoding-with-rtl-sdr/

If mobile, that might be why it might have been in different seeming
locations. Speculation was also it might have been on a patrol
routing between NA and Greenland air space.

73, Ben - wb2rhm

 

Thanks John. fascinating for sure... great to have so many interested folks monitoring/listening/sharing. Now off to hamcation in orlando !

 

What evidence do we have that any of this activity is related to market trading? I've heard the term "high frequency trading" but does that actually refer to the high frequency radio bands? Or does it simply mean "rapid" trading?

I do know that microwave networks are being built to support rapid market trading, which makes far more sense than doing it on HF. Given the tight delay constraints (remember they're trying to beat the speed of light in fiber, which is about two thirds the speed of light in air or vacuum) it seems unlikely that they could do this with HF radio given the data rate limits imposed by physics (if not regulation) and the likely sizes of the messages being transmitted.

But I'm certainly open to any confirmed evidence.

 

It refers to both, confusingly. HF as in HFT, high frequency trading, and HF as in radio.

What would be acceptable evidence? There are some articles in notable financial publications like the WSJ. There apparently is a lot of competition for the technology, so not a lot being published as yet.

Microwaves were first, and apparently worked awhile for some paths and applications. But it doesn't work for trans-oceanic international markets and apparently the drive for the reward kept pushing innovations.

I believe most of the HFT systems have parallel data comm methods, ie, internet, dedicated microwave, and in some, HF, which apparently in many cases is not being used for high bandwidth tasks that involve moving large amounts of data.

Instead HF is used to only transfer perhaps only one bit, ie, a timing flag, a "tick", that triggers a pre-arranged trading action (or inhibits it) or synchronizes an algorithm(s) running on a special processor for a series of them.

In case you have not seen it, here is a link to a blogger that started and did much of the initial investigation. It contains an extensive series of reports by Bob Van Valzah KE9YQ, who works in the HFT tech industry and has been published widely, worth reading at least through Part 4.

IEEE article - Wall Street Tries Shortwave Radio to Make High-Frequency Trades Across the Atlantic

 

Resurrecting for those who forgot.