Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

[Sagar G]

The above article is more of a sad note by a coconut than what the headline seems to suggest. I would go a bit off topic now since the coconut author and the agency she works/worked for caught my attention.

The list of partners provided on their website establishes their true identity as mere poodles of furreign investors.

But but but joo are a kaamonal hindoo male fundamentalist !!! OK, here are some other articles by the same author

India: Recognizing Pakistan’s Paradigm Shift
India’s new government must acknowledge the change in internal Pakistani politics, and be innovative.
By Shairee Malhotra June 04, 2014

Having pearls of wisdom like

While a tough line on Pakistan may have been appropriate for New Delhi a few years ago, in recent years the state of affairs seems to have somewhat altered. There is a growing realization in Pakistan that India no longer poses the largest threat to the country, and in this realization lies Pakistan’s greatest hope of becoming a “normal” country, and not the dysfunctional security state that it currently is.

As Shekhar Gupta of the Indian Express concedes, “Many Pakistan-watchers, particularly in India, allow our contempt, fear and distrust of the Pakistani army to so cloud our judgment, we fail to see a fundamental, and virtuous change.”

Jingoistic language and calls for sterner belligerent action on the part of Indian leaders, even in the event of a terrorist attack, are self-defeating; and risk a reversal of this welcomed change in attitude in Pakistan.

Another article by motorham

What Do Pakistan's Protests Mean for India?
Pakistan’s political turmoil suggests that any improvement in bilateral relations will have limits.
By Shairee Malhotra September 17, 2014

This one is surprisingly less nauseating !!!

If you go to the site of Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations then I would like to draw your attention to the top left hand side and see the map of India posted their.



Yup that's the map on a supposedly "Indian" think tank. If you click on it though the site will lead you to another page and the map changes and becomes what it's supposed to be.

Fellow members can go there, explore and dig more info about other coconuts.

[Haresh]

From allahs favourite newspaper.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... or-muslims

[JE Menon]

^^^comments are aplenty and interesting

[nandakumar]

I understand that under UK election law, any citizen of a commonwealth country and who is a permanent resident inUK can vote in their elections. But of course you have to first register as a voter. If this is indeed the case, my feeling is the Indian expat community must be much larger than the 600,000 that is mentioned. Can somebody clarify?

[Lisa]

I understand that under UK election law, any citizen of a commonwealth country and who is a permanent resident inUK can vote in their elections. But of course you have to first register as a voter. If this is indeed the case, my feeling is the Indian expat community must be much larger than the 600,000 that is mentioned. Can somebody clarify?

2011 Census data release by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Christian - 33,243,175

Buddhist - 247,743

Hindu - 816,633

Sikh - 423,158

Muslim - 2,706,066

Jewish - 263,346

Other religion - 240,530

No religion - 14,097,229

Religion not stated - 4,038,032

[nandakumar]

Lisa
Will the Census data cover Indian citizens but are permanent residents of UK? I know of quite a few doctors and software professionals who retain Indian citizenship but are permanent residents of UK. Come to think of it, Anil Agarwal of Vedanta Resources is a permanent resident. There must be many others like him. Would they have taken a deep enough interest in UK politics to register as a voter and participate in the electoral process?

[Rahul M]

friend of mine who is doing research in an univ in UK has done so. I guess others do as well.

[panduranghari]

Indeed. Me and wife have been in UQ for over 12 years but we still have retained our Indian passports. One rationale is- a brown man with British passport could be a Paki. But a brown man with Indian passport is very unlikely to be a Paki. We are a minority in this respect however. Most of our Indian friends have given up Indian passports.

[Lisa]

nandakumar,

Irrespective of nationality, if you live in the UK you must complete the census. I am of the opinion that in constituencies where the Indians constitute a large part of the population and are predominately working class they will on the whole vote for Labour. Where they are more affluent they will vote for the Conservatives.

[Rahul M]

Indeed. Me and wife have been in UQ for over 12 years but we still have retained our Indian passports. One rationale is- a brown man with British passport could be a Paki. But a brown man with Indian passport is very unlikely to be a Paki. We are a minority in this respect however. Most of our Indian friends have given up Indian passports.

AFAIK you dont need to give up your passport to vote. sounds surprising but apparently true from my cursory check on the net. my friend remains an Indian citizen yet voted in these elections.

[panduranghari]

Yes my wife did vote. I choose to opt out of the electoral rolls. I had voted in the last 2 elections.

[member_22733]

No wonder UQstan is so uppity about any kind of immigration.

[Shalav]

Parents voted in UK elections in the late 70's and early 80's - the Civic Center registered them on the voters list when they went in to register children for school etc. That was part of the procedure then. When asked why they were registered on the voters list, they were told its because they pay taxes.

Could be another reason additional to this, but you can certainly vote in the UK if you are a registered tax payer. They did not have to give up Indian passports. R2I for them was early 80's.

[Vayutuvan]

I applaud UK for learning a lesson after loosing the American colonies from the American Revolution. Unfortunately they did not learn the right lesson. It is also unfortunate that the US itself did not learn the lesson which they think they taught UK.

[eklavya]

The England & Wales census data is quite detailed. There is an excel at this link:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/ ... A77-306085

Open the excel, and it provides a number of topics. Topic 31 is "Ethnic group be religion". Click on that link and it takes you to this page:

http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/DC2201EW

Choose the options on the left hand side, and presto, you have a nice table:

For example:

http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/D ... c_relpuk11

So, Lisa is right that the number of Hindus numbered 816,633; but of these 621,983 were of Indian origin, and 148,438 of Other Asian (my expectation is mainly Sri Lankan Tamils, but maybe some Nepalese too).

Of the 1.4m Indians, approximately 0.62m Hindus, 0.31m Sikhs, 0.2m Muslims, 0.14m Christians, etc.

[Karthik S]

http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/nearly-5 ... ied-764435

"Nearly 50% Drop in Indian Students' Number Since 2010, UK Universities Worried"

[ramana]

The NPR is agog with news of wide spread prevalence of child molestation among UK elite. The High Constable statement is being given wide coverage.
Basically 261 high society have been identified. 200 are already dead. The root cause is the "boarding school" culture of bullying and abuse combined with stiff upper lip of not complaining helped to keep it under wraps. The police also did not register cases to avoid highlighting the issues.

Maybe Leslie Udwin is better off making #UKSaveChildren.

[Philip]

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/com ... 69098.html
Out-of-date, outnumbered and out of the loop: How Britain resigned as a global power

Fareed Zakaria
Friday 22 May 2015

The day that Britain resigned as a global power
As David Cameron arrives in Riga, a columnist for the Washington Post writes about how the inward turn of the UK is a tragedy for us all

On Monday, David Cameron gave his first major speech after being re-elected as Prime Minister. Confronting a world of challenges — including Greece’s possible exit from the euro, a massive migration crisis on Europe’s shores, Ukraine’s perilous state, Russia’s continued intransigence, the advance of Isis and the continuing chaos in the Middle East — Cameron chose to talk about . . . a plan to ensure that hospitals will be better staffed on weekends.

Okay, that’s a bit unfair. Leaders everywhere, including in the United States, understand that “all politics is local.” But spending a few days recently in Britain, I was struck by just how parochial it has become. After an extraordinary 300-year run, Britain has essentially resigned as a global power.

Over the next few years, Britain’s army will shrink to about 80,000. A report from the Royal United Services Institute predicts that the number could get as low as 50,000, which, the Daily Telegraph points out, would be smaller than at any point since the 1770s — and, as David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy magazine notes, about the same size as the New York Police Department.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies concludes that over the past five years “the 8 per cent to 9 per cent decrease in the UK military defence budget . . . has led to a 20 per cent to 30 per cent reduction in conventional capability.” No wonder, then, that Britain has been a minor, reluctant ally in the air strikes against Isis. Britain’s 30-year-old Tornado fleet of planes is a generation behind the American F-22s it flies alongside. The Royal Navy, which once ruled the waves, operates without a single aircraft carrier (although two are under construction).

Nato members are supposed to maintain defence spending at 2 per cent of their gross domestic product. Britain is hovering around that mark and has refused to commit to maintaining budgets at that level. (It should be said that most other European countries are worse, which means that the United States accounts for more than 70 per cent of Nato's military spending.) The same is true of other elements of Britain’s global influence. In Cameron’s first term, the Foreign Office budget was cut by more than a quarter, and further trims are likely. The BBC World Service, perhaps the most influential arm of the country’s global public diplomacy, has shuttered five of its foreign-language broadcasts, and the organization’s entire budget has been slashed, with more cuts to come.

The country is suspicious of a robust foreign policy of any kind — including serious sanctions against Russia, getting tough in trade talks with China, the use of force in the Middle East and an engaged relationship with the rest of Europe. During the recent election, as The Post reported, foreign policy barely surfaced.

Why does this matter? Because on almost all global issues, Britain has a voice that is intelligent, engaged and forward-looking. It wants to strengthen and uphold today’s international system — one based on the free flow of ideas, goods and services around the world, one that promotes individual rights and the rule of law.

This is not an accident. Britain essentially created the world we live in. In his excellent book God and Gold, Walter Russell Mead points out that in the 16th century many countries were poised to advance economically and politically — Northern Italy’s city-states, the Hanseatic League, the Low Countries, France, Spain. But Britain managed to edge out the others, becoming the first great industrial economy and the modern world’s first superpower. It colonized and shaped countries and cultures from Australia to India to Africa to the Western Hemisphere, including of course, its settlements in North America. Had Spain or Germany become the world’s leading power, things would look very different today.

It is a paradox, readily apparent to visitors to Britain, that London continues to thrive as a global hub, increasingly cosmopolitan and worldly. More than a third of Londoners were born outside the United Kingdom. And this government has been more than willing to travel around the world petitioning for investment, whether it be Chinese, Russian or Arab. That is fine as a strategy for an aspiring entrepôt or financial haven, but Britain is not Luxembourg. It is, even now, a country with the talent, history and capacity to shape the international order. Which is why the inward turn of the United Kingdom is a tragedy not just for it but for all of us.

[eklavya]

The Economist (April 4 edition): Little Britain

[Karan M]

http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/nearly-5 ... ied-764435

"Nearly 50% Drop in Indian Students' Number Since 2010, UK Universities Worried"

Knowing the kind of "education" some of these so called universities provide versus their US and Indian peers, no big surprise. Freakin' PR stats and rankings apart.

[Karan M]

The Economist (April 4 edition): Little Britain

The imperialist turds at Economist go waah waah whilst praising their own bakwaas types.
ROTFL onlee

Since then Britain has become ever more unwilling to deploy the diplomatic and military resources it does possess. For a country that has long been respected for the skills of its diplomats, the professionalism and dash of its armed forces, the global outlook of its political leaders and its ability to punch above its weight, the decline has been unmistakable.

Musharraf would have found it hard to beat this gibberish.

[Vayutuvan]

Knowing the kind of "education" some of these so called universities provide versus their US and Indian peers, no big surprise. Freakin' PR stats and rankings apart.

Lots of Indian students go to LSE for short term (i.e. 6 month) diploma courses. Realization might have set in that there is no VFM in that proposition.

[sanjaykumar]

Since then Britain has become ever more unwilling to deploy the diplomatic and military resources it does possess. For a country that has long been respected for the skills of its diplomats, the professionalism and dash of its armed forces, the global outlook of its political leaders and its ability to punch above its weight, the decline has been unmistakable.


I am embarrassed for the British, I thought they were more sophisticated than this.


The most odious panegyrics are written to one's self. Expected in Mao's China, but civilised Britain?

[sanjaykumar]

Just in case The Economist needs to be reminded-please recall the dash of the forces in Kenya and Malaysia as well as Diego Garcia as minor examples. As for punching above its weight, that is in the same club along with Pakistan and Australia. For very similar reasons of alliance with a certain member of the comity of nations, the shahenshah, the paterfamilias.
.

[Vayutuvan]

SK: "uncivilizing" them those burra sahebs in bilayat is brown man's burden. We have to bear the weight willingly since the very existence of the uncivilized natives is at stake.

[Lisa]

nandakumarji,

For you,

EU citizens not eligible for referendum vote, says No 10

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32872211

[Prem]

http://www.ndtv.com/diaspora/indian-ori ... vey-765918
Indian-Origin Voters Played Decisive Role in UK Polls: Survey

The Conservatives won a majority as a result of one million ethnic minority votes, new research by British Future think tank has found.Nearly 6,15,000 Indian-origin voters were expected to vote in the May 7 elections this year with many expected to switch loyalties from Opposition Labour to the Conservative party.While the survey does not break down the ethnic minority vote in the UK by countries of origin, its overall results confirm a significant swing in favour of the ruling Tories.It found much higher support for the Conservatives among Asian voters this year with 50 per cent in favour of Cameron's party and only 38 per cent supporting Ed Miliband-led Labour./b]Along religious lines, nearly 49 per cent Hindus and Sikhs favoured Tories as compared to 41 per cent for Labour.Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, said, "this research shows that ethnic minority votes are more 'up for grabs' than ever before. Minority voters still prefer Labour to the Conservatives"."If it presents itself only as a party of the underdog, Labour may send a message to aspirational ethnic minority voters that, if you get on in British society, you 'trade up' to the Tories," Mr Katwala said.Based on an estimated three million ethnic minority voters taking part in the election, the results equate to the Conservatives securing a million votes for the first time in the party's history while Labour achieved 1.6 million.The Liberal Democrats and Greens both gained about 1,50,000 votes from this group, with anti-immigrant UKIP on 60,000 and the SNP on 40,000.It is not clear if those minorities that swung to the Conservatives were attracted by its entrepreneurial message or alienated by the tougher line from Labour on immigration."The Conservatives have done well in extending their appeal to minority voters, even though these may have been votes for David Cameron rather than his party," Mr Katwala added.Omar Khan, director of race equality thinktank Runnmymede Trust added, "Labour's vote share looks to have held up best in the top 75 most diverse seats in the UK, where half of BME (black and minority ethnic) people live."But with more and more BME people moving outside the major cities the Conservatives appear well placed to make further gains in 2020 and beyond if they can respond to ethnic inequalities and realise BME aspirations while in government."

[rsingh]

pssssst............Churchil was a gay. Inform yourself.

https://www.google.be/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 0622,d.bGg

[ramana]

X-Post....

That stat should be put up at every US airport,port and on the form of those applying for a visa!

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/m ... o-ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro: treatment of African Americans is a 'buried giant' for the US
Race problems in America are a ‘buried giant’ – something general society might prefer to forget – according to Booker prize winner

Sunday 24 May 2015 21.35 BST Last modified on Sunday 24 May 2015
The treatment of African Americans is emerging as one of America’s “buried giants”, a subject that the general population might prefer to forget, Booker prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro has said.

Speaking to the BBC’s Martha Kearney at the Hay Festival on Sunday, the author said he had become fascinated with the idea of “societal memory and collective forgetting” when writing his new novel The Buried Giant, his first book in a decade.

Ishiguro said he had become aware that much of his earlier work was about the memories of individuals, and he wanted to examine the memory of a society, and what societies are willing to forget – the “buried giants” of the book’s title.

Unwilling to be drawn into specifics about Britain’s“buried giants”, [/b]Ishiguro said he saw the treatment of racial minorities in America as an example of collective forgetfulness.
[/b]


“They are really struggling with race problems right now, and I heard someone say in America that perhaps what was needed was an official procedure, like the truth and reconciliation [commission] in South Africa after apartheid, about the treatment of African Americans throughout history, because it will not go away,” he remarked.

“Others say it is better to forget, because to bring that subject up again will create a whole new angry generation. There are things that societies feel, collectively, that it is better to forget.”

The author said that, though he could have set his novel in Rwanda or in Kosovo, he had picked a semi-mythical setting of historical Britain to avoid any implication that he was writing about any particular country or war.

Ishiguro, who recently turned 60, said he had begun to look more critically at his earlier works, like the Man Booker prize-winning The Remains of The Day, and the assumptions he made as a younger man writing about age.

“I actually have begun to question whether the whole premise of those books were right, to be honest,” he said. “When I was younger and wrote books like The Remains of the Day, I assumed that if you get your moral values right at a certain stage, you can steer a good course through your life.

“I think that was the unexamined assumption I had when I wrote that, and when I wrote An Artist of the Floating World. When I got into my 40s, I thought ‘that was a little naive’.

“That whole model of figuring out values, debating them in pubs and student halls of residence, and then those values then seeing you through [life], applies only up to a point. Actually, you discover you do not have that much control over your life.”

Britain's "buried giants" are how they treated their colonies. They massacred natives and engineered famines to kill off the rest all the while maintaining a high moral stance of civilizing the heathen stiff upper lip.

Another is Muslim immigration into UK that is causing rampant rape and human trafficking that it is counted in UK GDP.

[Lisa]

^ Booker prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro has said

Ironic isn't it. Booker prize winner, i.e. the same Booker that was build on the profits of the slave trade! Strange that both the Guardian and Kazuo Ishiguro conveniently elected to omit that tiny fact from the article!

[Philip]

Ha!Ha!Ha! Enjoy the pecadilloes of a former British "Bull Sh*t" Corporation boss!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay- ... press.html
The BBC boss, the secret safe and the prostitute on the Orient Express

The BBC signed off an expenses claim by a former chairman of the governors for use of a prostitute aboard the Orient Express, according to an official history

By Anita Singh, Arts and Entertainment Editor
30 May 2015

A former chairman of the BBC governors used a prostitute on the Orient Express and claimed back the cost on expenses, it has been alleged.

Jean Seaton, the official BBC historian who was granted unprecedented access to its archives, identified the chairman in question as Baron Howard of Henderskelfe, who occupied the post from 1980-83.

According to Seaton, the expenses claim was preserved in a manila envelope in a safe at the BBC’s headquarters, its existence known only to those at the very top.

She stumbled across the extraordinary revelation when interviewing a former secretary of the BBC, who had been shown what the envelope contained.

“She arrives in this wonderful, panelled office and thinks, ‘I’ve made it, I’ve got power,’” Seaton told an audience at the Hay Festival.

The Orient Express

“In the corner of the room there is an old-fashioned safe. She thinks, ‘What’s in it? The war books? The code I have to read when there is a nuclear attack? A copy of the Charter?’”

“So she calls up the security man. He clears all the secretaries out of the side office. The safe door swings open and in this safe there is one thing – a brown manila envelope.

“And in the brown manila envelope is a signed-off expenses form for the use of a prostitute on the Orient Express by the chairman, Lord George Howard.”

• BBC chiefs' expenses rise under Lord Hall
• Alan Yentob's £1,000 taxi bill

Lord Howard, who died in 1984, was custodian of Castle Howard in North Yorkshire, famous as the setting for television’s Brideshead Revisited drama. His wife, Lady Cecilia, died in 1974.

Two of his sons, Simon and Nicholas, are the current custodians.

Explaining why the document had been preserved in the safe, Seaton said: “It had been left by the previous secretary - who had had a nervous breakdown; people holding the BBC together have nervous breakdowns – as a warning to this secretary that she would have to deal with expenses and would have to deal with the chairman of the BBC, who in many ways had been a great defender of the BBC and fought the Tories, but just had to be managed.”

In her book, Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the Nation 1974-1987, Seaton said Lord Howard’s status meant the expenses claim was never reported as inappropriate.

“A great landowner, a man with a fine war record, a widower: how and where could a complaint about him be made?” she writes.

Castle Howard, former home of Lord Howard and setting for Bridehead Revisited (Picture: Alamy)

During her talk at Hay, Seaton also spoke about the climate at the BBC in the 1970s which allowed men to abuse their position of power, as the subsequent revelations about Jimmy Savile made plain.

Former BBC employees told her about a senior executive who propositioned female secretaries, inviting them to submit to spanking sessions.

When a number of women complained, the executive was not reprimanded but instead given an impressive new job in New York.

Seaton’s book contains a chapter on the BBC’s relationship with the Royal Family, which claims the 1977 series Royal Heritage, presented by Huw Wheldon, was made as a result of lobbying by the Duke of Edinburgh.

Seaton claimed the BBC employs a royal liaison officer “was very annoyed by my chapter and tried to cut things out, and there are other people at the BBC who like the fact it is rather critical about the Royal Family”.

[panduranghari]

Panduranghariji,

Thank you for the article. It does not explain away what I am saying, ie, there is no exemption to any UK law upon the square mile and in particular to any financial regulation. More to the point, if such a discrepancy did exist, would anyone care to explain the migration from the square mile of almost all major banks to Canary Warf where allegedly such protection does not exist.

I have been thinking and trying to find an answer to the question you posed - would anyone care to explain the migration from the square mile of almost all major banks to Canary Warf where allegedly such protection does not exist?

I found the answer in the most unexpected place- a book which my wife gave me on our wedding anniversary The book is called 'Flashboys - cracking the money code' by Michael Lewis.

The explanation is Americanization of Financial services. I will try to explain this in a few lines what the book took a few pages. In a stock market,, there is an exchange. The exchange with makes buying and selling of stock possible. If you want to buy 100,000 shares of microsoft but only 2000 are available. you DONT buy 2000 alone because if you buy 2000 the next 98000 will cost you a bit more than what you paid for the 2000. Now in a free market, can such a monopoly be allowed. Why should NYSE, LSE, BSE be the only designated exchanges? Now if there were more than 1 exchange where this buying is possible, how good it is for the market? More choice, right? How far can you be from the market?

The question arises 'Where is the market located'? Its everywhere in reality. The old London Stock exchange is located in central london. However, NYSE opened an exchange to compete with it in Docklands, then there is one based in Basildon, Essex. Another one is based in Slough next to Reading. To make connections to each other they needed high speed connections. It gave rise to the need of fibre-optic communications, high speed switches, faster servers. Every 2 weeks it was shaving off 0.3 microseconds of speed from the time before. If I place an order for 100000 shares, after seeing there is 100000 shares available and it took my order to get to the market 1 second. If a high frequency trader saw I was placing this order and bought those 100000 shares 0.5 millisecond before I did and then sold it 0.3 millisecond before I bought it, I lost money by buying at a higher price. It may be a small number for a small trader like me, however if a big hedge fund placed an order over the whole year worth 200 billion dollars, the costs could add up substantially. The exchanges create the market and in trying to lure us to make money by buying stock, we get screwed over.

The business location within the city of London may not give much advantage in terms of regulatory protection but they certainly do give advantage as the bourse located within the LSE sets the price i.e. the FTSE is located in theory the closest to LSE than to BATS or NASDAQ BX. There is no way one could get a huge office block adjacent to LSE like the big banks have in Docklands. So they work on arbitrage. The know they will make money as long as they can front run the order.

It is this very reason why the US authorities along with the British ones are prosecuting Navinder Singh Sarao for trading from his mothers basement flat in Hounslow and causing losses to the bourses. He is not paying for the privilege of having the servers close to the main frame nor does he have access to huge funds nor does he have access to high speed fibreoptic connection directly to the bourse.

Do read the book. Its AMAZING.

[Agnimitra]

panduranghari ji, thanks for the book recommendation.

[JTull]

What utter rubbish!

Trading Equities is not the only thing banks do and is perhaps one of the smallest parts of their business. Now, you can co-locate servers for high frequency trading. But now a days, the dark pools trade a lot and you don't have to be co-located for that. Otherwise some of the most aggressive banks (e.g. Goldman) won't be in the City (and elsewhere) instead of Canary Wharf, not to mention all the hedge funds in Mayfair or some as far as Wimbledon.

Banks (and, law firms, international real estate majors, pension funds, pharma companies, auto companies, electronics, etc) are all moving to CW because per sqft rents are as much as a fifth of the City and infrastructure is new (it is much cheaper to build to your spec in CW than to re-build in the City).

And, Navinder Singh Sarao is being sued (though I don't agree with it, and for different reasons altogether) because he used spoofing, which is illegal now in US even though it was perfectly legal not long ago (and still is in most of the world). He basically puts a very large order in the opposite direction to the one he intends to trade. When the market reacts to that order he quickly cancels it and makes his small trade. Now his mistake was that he exposed his intention by working with his broker on the code to modify to allow such trading. And BTW, US is chasing him but he's based in London and that too in West London, very far from Canary Wharf.

And I know because I work on large rentals for banks and have long history of working with high-frequency guys. Infact a friend is making money while based in Dubai doing high-freq stuff in German markets because co-location of servers allows it. Mr Singh was never big enough to afford that kind of activity. This requires several million $ investment per annum per market just to keep up.

So yes, your theory is utter rubbish.

[Viv S]

Ha!Ha!Ha! Enjoy the pecadilloes of a former British "Bull Sh*t" Corporation boss!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay- ... press.html
The BBC boss, the secret safe and the prostitute on the Orient Express

To the Moderators/Administrators (Indranil, RohitVats, Ramana, Suraj, SSridhar, Singha or other kind soul with hacking skills stumbles across this) -

Can we please have the 'Bharat Rakshak Forums' link on the main page redirect to the Board Index NOT the active topics page.

[panduranghari]

JTull ji,

I am as unaware as you are. Until I read the book. And the guy who started this investigation was Brad Katsuyama worked for Royal Bank of Canada. He along with a few other guys, put the pieces of puzzle together. They met on record the top guys on wall street- Eihnhorn, T Price etc. The explanation about dark pools run by the big 8 was as remarkable to me as it may have come to you. Even while reading it I gave credence to your and the argument raised by SEC that Sarao spoofed the market. But if you read how the front running is happening, I do not think what Credit Suisse was doing is any different from Sarao was doing. Only thing is what Katsuyama found out about this, he initially thought it was him alone who knew. But later it unfolds that the big banks knew and it was collusion on a scale which was unprecedented.

When you say

And I know because I work on large rentals for banks and have long history of working with high-frequency guys.

This is exactly what Ronan Ryan says in the book. He is the technical guy who helped set up most of the infrastructure for all these big boys. He was flabbergasted when he realised how dumb the traders really are. They had no idea how the whole thing was put together. He himself says in the book - most people working on wall street are 'KNOWING' but are not 'KNOWLEDGEABLE' about the way it works.

My understanding was always that the stock market was/is rigged. However NOT in a way that enables the order execution to be in a way to front run.
The findings which were brought to the attention of SEC, barely raised eyebrows. It seems that the SEC administrators eventually retire and join either Citadel or Getco - ONE of the 2 HFT firms.

T Price Rowe runs a hedge fund worth 10 Billion dollars. When he met Katsuyama and Ronan, his question was how will he solve his annual 300 million dollar problem when he is running a fund worth 10B? The 300 m he alluding to is loss he is undertaking when he is being front run. Initially he did not know, then he did not believe and eventually he did any experiment.

He had access to a dark pool run by Goldman Sachs. He wanted to sell a Chipotle stock which rarely trades. So he placed an order for 100 into the dark pool late at night when the markets were sleeping. He also was watching his blooomberg terminal (which costs $8000 per month and not everyone can afford to have one) simultaneously. In theory nothing should have happened as markets were closed. However, the bloomberg terminal showed a jump. He wondered why and he did his own investigation and he arrived to the same conclusion as Katsuyama et al.

Saar please do read it book. I am not making my own theories here. I am just a messenger.

The house of cards is going to come falling down soon. The scale is unimaginable to us now. But it will be a sight no one can ever forget as long as one is going to be living.

[JTull]

Your monologue has no explanation for why banks are relocating to CW.

As I said, spoofing is illegal in many markets but not in all. There's a push to get greater transparency into the functioning of the dark pools but your example is not really about front-running. OTC markets work differently to exchange markets. Even in exchanges, in an illiquid makret (just like your example) when an order comes, if there's a market-maker then he has to react to it. He has to show a 'good' bid and a 'good' offer to be considered a market maker (which may come with certain privileges). If a bid comes and in such illiquid stock he doesn't have holdings his reaction to the bid will be more abrupt. Think of an order to a dark pool as an order directly with a market maker who needs to cover his position. Where will he go to cover his position? The market! If the exchanges are closed and only electronic after-hours makrets are available then you'll see that abrupt reaction.

Still, an example of a small after-hours trade is not an 'explanation' why banks are moving to Canary Wharf. In fact, going by your reasons they should all move to US instead of CW. Why do you believe CW has the fastest connections to US markets (as per your examples).

Name dropping well-known investors, using words like 'front-running' and 'Bloomberg' are not a way to build an argument.

And Bloomberg does not cost $8000pm, more like $2000pm. I know because I've one and so does more than 300,000 others. They don't become experts on all subjects just because they have one. And people who know them (like you) are even less likely to be the experts.

An expert in a field is a person who has direct working knowledge of the area he purports to know. The two arguments you gave are incorrect and no amount of name dropping and 'knowing' other 'experts' makes you into one. I've almost never picked a fight on this forum in almost 15 yrs (or so) of involvement, but I cannot stand a guy who pretends to be an expert in an area where I've earned my bread for 2 decades, just because he has read a book or has a friend who has read it.

You're welcome to continue about the reptilian Limbic system as I know nothing about it, but try stay out of areas where you may be caught out by people with direct knowledge of the subject.

[panduranghari]

JTull ji,
I am but a messenger. Please read the book and post a critique. I do not understand it as well as you do. You work in it after all. I am but a lowly dental surgeon running my own practice and employing a few people in doing some coal face dentistry. I have no inclination of finance. But then that is the reason i am on BRF. I learn so much here that its indespensable to me.

The book is really good. It explains things that I did not know. May be you do know so it may be inconsequential to your understanding. Just like you cannot say if a Straumann implant is a better choice to replace the lower left 1st molar or a Nobel Biocare one is more appropriate.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flash-Boys-Mich ... 0241003636

[nandakumar]

nandakumarji,

For you,

EU citizens not eligible for referendum vote, says No 10

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32872211

Lisa
Sorry I missed this post. But it does make sense isn't it? It is a bit like the proposition that you can't be judge in your cause. If UK decides to opt of EU, the decision would affect their future. So they can't be allowed to participate in the referrundum. But Commonwealth citizens are on a different footing. So it is only fair that be allowed to participate in the referrundum.

[Lisa]

panduranghari,

Reading is not a bad idea itself but believing all you read is.

My friend currently works in co-locating trading servers so the bulk of what you say becomes unfounded unless he is lying about his job. If you have the money you can access any of these co-located servers. Another friend of mine does exactly that even though his trading team is made up of 4 employees. So the suggestion about the square mile is nonsense.

Please also look up Flash Trading, Jim Simons and Renaissance Technologies. All of these do exactly what your book says in not possible,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harris_Simons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies

http://dealbreaker.com/2012/03/the-seco ... etirement/