The Matrix but w/money: high-freq trading (HFT)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

From ars technica: The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading.

"Supercomputers pitted against one another in a high-stakes battle of attack and counterattack over a global network where predatory algorithms trawl the information stream, competing every millisecond to gain an informational advantage over rivals. It sounds like Hollywood fiction, but it's just an average trading day on the stock market."

Note that NJ is the center of this HFT cloud, in order to minimize latency in the NYSE ECN trades.

Note also that "those pit traders who pose for the cameras are mainly there for the cameras." I.e., they are props for a set.

This is reminescent of the PR for the first public demonstration of the ENIAC (one of the world's first stored-program, electronic computers):

"In planning their public demonstration in 1946, it occurred to the ENIAC team to place translucent spheres-- ping-pong balls cut in half-- over the neon bulbs that displayed the values of each of ENIAC's twenty accumulators. Ever since, flashing lights have been part of the scene involving computers and science fiction."

One thing that hasn't changed in the intervening 60 years: Stagecraft.