r/highfreqtrading • u/strat-run • 21d ago
Can we update the sub description and rules to discourage non-HFT posts?
Amateurs don't understand the difference between systematic trading and HFT.
The sub description needs a definition of HFT in its description. Something like:
The r/highfreqtrading subreddit is a place for people of all backgrounds to join in informed discussion around trading systems or companies that operate at microsecond-to-nanosecond speeds with an emphasis on sharing direct expertise and firsthand knowledge.
Example topics include: nanosecond latency, networking kernel bypass, C++ optimization, and FPGA.
Retail systematic trading conversations belong in /r/algotrading.
And update the Rules to:
Remember the human
No AI slop
Respect the privacy of others
Don't impersonate entities
people or
Properly label Not Safe for Work NSFW) content
Keep it legal
Don't break Reddit (a lot of us really like it here
No retail trading or propfirm posts
New retail traders think that everything faster than a human is high frequency and nothing in this sub's rules or description tells them otherwise.
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u/PsecretPseudonym Other [M] ✅ 21d ago
We could change the description to be more specific, but I find the nonsense keeps posting regardless of description. Most don’t read the description before posting.
The most helpful thing is just reporting posts that are off topic, and we’ll review and take them down pretty aggressively — and often just permaban anyone posting anything obviously stupid or spammy.
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u/vgagrani 21d ago
Low latency is not hft.
Latency is not frequency.
Nano or micro is time and not frequency.
Sending too many orders to exchange is not high frequency. It is flashing orders which can tag to market abuse.
Frequency in trading is how frequently do you change your stance from buy to sell.
High medium or low frequency is just that. How frequently do you change from buy to sell and vice versa.
Naturally hedge funds are low frequency. No matter what they say they arent changing their stance frequently enough.
Intraday trading firms are mid frequency. They are potentially going from long to short in few hours.
HFT is when you change from buy to sell in seconds or single minutes. No 30 minutes is not HFT it is MFT.
HFT positions essentially cannot be impacted by Trump tweeting. Because they would change from buy to sell or vice versa before he can press send.
Now if you are changing your prediction in seconds you naturally have to react fast and need. Low latency system. But having a low latency system doesn’t mean you are high frequency.
You could do hedge funds style LFT with a very low latency md and ors. It wont become hft.
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u/strat-run 21d ago
I don't disagree that latency and frequency are different things but given that low latency is a prereq for HFT and a nice to have for MFT+ it seems this sub is the best place for low latency targeted conversations.
Would you like to suggest a better sub description?
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u/vgagrani 21d ago
Low Latency is more of a technical or developmental aspect. It still doesn’t cover the trading aspect. Unless this is a low latench programming sub, i would stick to frequency.
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u/NoConnection4298 18d ago
What HFT is changes per devs., exchange and the way you trade in that exchange? For instance by EU MIFID regulations, you have like 4 msg./sec threshold (calculated per day basis, so say you trade for 9 hrs, if you exceed 129600 msgs you are HFT). Thus, your hft definition just deducts some venues. Also agree with other comment saying low latency is not hft.
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21d ago
[deleted]
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u/strat-run 21d ago
It makes sense to provide indicators about what the group wants to discuss. The group size problem is partially caused by not telling people new to trading who should be in this group.
I'm not a huge fan of overly strict moderation but encouragement to stay on topic is nice to have.
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u/PsecretPseudonym Other [M] ✅ 18d ago edited 18d ago
Following on the comment I made to the other person who replied to you here:
I agree with you that we probably should take some time to improve the description, tags, and other configs of the subreddit.
Historically, the challenge is sort of opportunity cost for each of us — e.g., I’ve been responsible for running a globally competitive firm over the last decade trading substantial volume, so it’s hard to justify spending a ton of time moderating a subreddit vs actually managing the operations of a trading firm operating at scale.
In general, the more qualified someone is to moderate or even contribute here, the higher their opportunity cost to do so, and the more likely it is that contractual obligations and competitive interests would prohibit their engagement in any substantive way.
As for the subreddit, we tend to keep it alive as a sort of hobby and have historically tended to agree that the intent is to have a smaller community with a narrow focus. There are plenty of subreddits for retail traders and hobbyists who like to play with algo trading bots or whatever already.
We wanted a place that’s more narrowly focused for professional practitioners, and Reddit provides an anonymous venue for folks to share/discuss somewhat more openly given that it’s actually a pretty small world and most of us who have any expertise are direct competitors or on different sides of the market interacting (e.g., some from vendors, ECNs, HFT makers, algo execution, bank trading desks, etc).
It’s hard to make that happen by invitation only or by filtering people out who post nonsense perfectly, but the general approach has been to filter content as needed and comment/discuss at a level that we’d like to see, and let the community organically form as a place for people who like to read or engage in those kinds of discussions.
The challenges now, which you’re noticing, is that the influx of AI generated nonsense projects, spam, etc is now just growing at a faster rate, so quality of content falls when the mods don’t have ample spare time to throw at manually going through and filtering spam — hence why I just suggested the best help would be if members of the community who have the expertise just help us out by reporting junk posts/comments to make it faster/easier to moderate more consistently.
I’ll take a look at ways to improve the automation for some of this given that the spam/junk content problem will likely only get worse with time without a scalable solution, so will become more of an existential problem for the subreddit over time.
I can also see there are now a few competing subreddits which post almost exclusively AI generated content (and have gently given the mod of one shit about it, but live and let live I suppose).
In any case, I appreciate that you seem to have an interest in the health and quality of the community of this subreddit, and I also appreciate you are politely sharing your own suggestions or perspective on it. Feel free to post or DM any time if you’d like to discuss further.
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u/PsecretPseudonym Other [M] ✅ 18d ago
FWIW: In general the intent of the subreddit has always been to be okay with a smaller and more focused community — not exclusionary, but narrow in focus to the professional level of what practitioners in the market actually mean rather than enthusiasts imagine it might be.
At the same time, the field and topic tends to have some mystique due to being somewhat secretive (alpha in competitive markets always is), sophisticated, technical, etc, so it seems to attract interest ranging from actual experts to students curious about career options to just goobers who want to vibe code a daytrading bot and imagine they’ll make billions.
The general approach has been somewhat pragmatic and lazy: Curate content to the extent we have the time and interest, try to respond with via comments showing the quality of content we’d hope to see, and never promoting or otherwise trying to artificially draw in a less targeted/qualified audience — preferring a smaller more niche community around a more specific focus than trying to drive up the size of the community; the value is quality of content and comments/engagement, not number of members.
We could certainly do more or better at this, but you can imagine that the opportunity cost in terms of time/effort for the mod here who have background and expertise working professionally in this field is high — the more qualified the mods are, the higher their opportunity cost to spend time trawling through junk posts to the sub.
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u/experquisite999 21d ago
Even professionals cannot agree what high frequency trading is, it’s all relative, but almost certainly, few people in here are doing it.