Tobin Tax. Anyone want to help me build the Tobin Tax website? - page 6.

niemivh

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Quote from: Hawker on July 04, 2011, 09:33:29 AM

Quote from: tomcollins on July 04, 2011, 08:39:30 AM

Quote from: niemivh on July 04, 2011, 03:51:44 AM

Quote from: The Script on July 02, 2011, 03:37:18 AM

Quote from: tomcollins on July 01, 2011, 09:39:10 PM

I'd love for someone to tell my why speculation is bad.

I sense a thread derail coming, but yeah I don't see why speculation is so bad.

Apparently that's because both of you aren't aware of how much of it is going on, at least I hope that is the answer. Before I write a 10 page history on this I'll test the waters: do you think that there is any amount of speculation that would be 'too much' or is it fine to have 50 times GDP of a country flowing in and out of that countries capital markets annually?

No, I don't think there is the concept of "too much". Maybe you can explain why. Even just a short summary.

I don't know if the Tobin tax is a good idea but the problem it addresses is huge.

When you try to buy or sell securities, hypertrading is a way that allows the big players to find the maximum price you are willing to pay. They do it by placing and cancelling sales 1000s of times per second when a new buy order appears. The effect is that us peons always pay close to the max we are willing to pay while the Goldman Sachs type institutions pocket the difference between that max and the price the security could be acquired at.

Its thought that transaction tax to eliminate those trades would be helpful. If it provided a buffer for the "too big to fail" banks, so much the better.

Personally I'd worry that the exchange would simply take place somewhere else. I don't know if the tax would work.

Finally, someone who can quote facts on what is actually observably occurring the in the real world.

The markets are too big, they wouldn't just be able to leave because it would still be profitable to do business here; but it would have to be actually investment not scamming the system based on technicalities. It would drastically change the markets as they are presently because a vast majority of the trading is done my these algorithmic computers. But the benefit would be to all that are actually in the stock, currency or security markets for legitimate purposes.

niemivh

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Activity: 196

Merit: 100

Quote from: AyeYo on July 04, 2011, 09:05:52 AM

Quote from: niemivh on July 04, 2011, 04:00:17 AM

Quote from: AyeYo on July 02, 2011, 08:22:27 AM

Maybe just ignore the kids with the black/white worldviews and no understanding of trading and the rest of us can talk about this intelligently.

I'm browsing the wiki page and, without dedicating hours of time to read it all, maybe you can answer my question...

What does this do to retail FX traders? This is always my worry when these type of taxes and regulations pop up. They have a tendacy to hurt the retail guys, while doing little to the multi-billion dollar banks.

Question: Are you hypertrading?
If the answer is no and you are actually using the market as it was originally intended and setup 100s of years ago then is a 1% fee on each transaction going to crush your profits? Are you in for at least a mid-term investment or just a quick buck?

"They have a tendacy to hurt the retail guys, while doing little to the multi-billion dollar banks."

A Tobin Tax would do just the opposite as all the major banks and hedge funds are now using algorithmic trading, hence the large scale resistance to the Tobin Tax (check out the EU and the proposition of a Tobin Tax). They say it will be the end of the world and liquidity will go to 0 and the sky will fall if they have to pay a 1% tax, this is nonsense. There are many benefits that I won't cover here (too late at night, and too long to cover) in the direction of making markets more stable and other benefits beyond just the revenue - which would be immense! I've heard estimates in the Trillions. Do you want to be taxed to help pay off the national debt or do you what the Corporatocracy that has hijacked our government to pay for it?

My issue with it is that I, as a retailed trader, should be able to make short-term moves all day long. A 1% tax isn't going to crush my profits, but that's still 2% of guaranteed loss tacked onto every one of my round trip trades, basically an increased commission. It wouldn't be the end of the world for someone with my trading strategy, but it would for many other retail people. Taxing retail traders does nothing to help the system, but does hurt all the retail traders, and thus their brokerage firms as well.

If this was exclusive to big banks and/or only hold periods in the <5 second range, then I'd be in support of it. As it is, it's just another way to hurt retail traders and banks will undoubtedly find a way around it.

Much of the financial industry has become parasitical to the actual real productive economy. We can't have an economy exclusively (or even primarily) of money making money; it is the antithesis of a productive industrial economy.

The desire not to be taxed is nothing new, I don't want to be taxed but revenue is going to have to be collected if we want to have a government. I (and most lower and middle class people) get taxed enough, it is time for the financial sector to pay their fair share. The alarming thing is we have a class of people in our country that basically pay no taxes and therefore aren't paying for all the benefits that they are gaining by the system: infrastructure, police, firemen, the ability to operate a corporation with limited liability, an educated work force, military defense, etc.

niemivh

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Activity: 196

Merit: 100

Quote from: Fakeman on July 04, 2011, 07:26:38 AM

Why not just impose a 30-day waiting period on currency transactions? People who need currency for 'legitimate' purposes will just need to plan ahead. Grin

Seriously though, what's stopping forex speculators from just using trading services based in countries with no such laws?

30-day waiting period on currency transactions would definitely minimize currency speculation although it would provide no revenue and actually cost money to administer and police the process. And 30 days would be too long, although China implements capital controls so speculators can't make a killing on it's currency by driving it up and then selling it off.

Depends on the regulation around it regarding avoiding it, but that goes for most any law. If it can be avoided by off-shoring should we just abolish all laws?

Sovereign

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Activity: 80

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Quote from: AyeYo on July 04, 2011, 09:56:40 AM

Quote from: Reikoku on July 04, 2011, 09:47:53 AM

Quote from: niemivh on July 04, 2011, 03:34:58 AM

I'm assuming you have no idea what you're talking about quoting an article that brief and lacking in any detail. Do you know what a Stock Market is supposed to represent? What does it mean for a company to invest in your stock and then sell it and then buy it again once per nano-second? What does that even mean? Building algorithms that exploit market gyrations to get 0.01% profits over and over again provides no net benefit to the economy. Nothing new gets built, no research is done, no productivity is increased, no new products are made, no jobs are created etc. Please do some research on the automated trading networks and look up more than 1 page articles on 'how horrible' a Tobin Tax is. If you think Goldman Sachs is providing a service to civilization by hyper-trading I'd love to hear the argument.

I hate to tell you, but your personal definition of a 'service to civilization' doesn't benefit from a monopoly on the determination of value. If people didn't value shares, there wouldn't be a stock market in the first place. Shares obviously provide value, and some of that value comes from the ability to resell them. If you'd rather have a world without speculative investment, then you're talking about a world where it's very hard for a small business to get any capital whatsoever.

Once that speculative investment has happened, it is anybody's right to resell shares which they own. The rest is just down to human ingenuity. The fact that the resale of those shares doesn't 'do a service to civilization' is largely irrelevant, as it is just a part of a process which provides investment capital for building things, research and productivity.

You have no idea what you're talking about. HFT isn't speculative investment, it's exploitation.

HAHAHAHAHHAHHAHA

AyeYo

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Activity: 154

Merit: 103

Quote from: Hawker on July 04, 2011, 10:04:00 AM

Quote from: AyeYo on July 04, 2011, 09:42:44 AM

Why not just straight up ban HFT?

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/28/should-high-frequency-trading-be-banned-one-nobel-winner-thinks-so/

Technically its difficult as it can move a lot of trade into the shadow banking system. But retail investors are being gouged by the system right now so hopefully some way can be found to handle it, ideally in the exchanges themselves.

Well that's just it. Who cares if they gouge the shit out of each other? As long as they're no longer raping and pillaging retail traders, then let them find whatever loop holes they want to go off and do it to each other.

Taxing it just seems like the wrong response. By taxing it, we're giving it the rubber stamp of approval as ethical and ok to do, as long as they pay a piddly 1%.

Hawker

legendary

Activity: 1218

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Quote from: AyeYo on July 04, 2011, 09:42:44 AM

Why not just straight up ban HFT?

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/03/28/should-high-frequency-trading-be-banned-one-nobel-winner-thinks-so/

Technically its difficult as it can move a lot of trade into the shadow banking system. But retail investors are being gouged by the system right now so hopefully some way can be found to handle it, ideally in the exchanges themselves.

AyeYo

full member

Activity: 154

Merit: 103

Quote from: Reikoku on July 04, 2011, 09:47:53 AM

Quote from: niemivh on July 04, 2011, 03:34:58 AM

I'm assuming you have no idea what you're talking about quoting an article that brief and lacking in any detail. Do you know what a Stock Market is supposed to represent? What does it mean for a company to invest in your stock and then sell it and then buy it again once per nano-second? What does that even mean? Building algorithms that exploit market gyrations to get 0.01% profits over and over again provides no net benefit to the economy. Nothing new gets built, no research is done, no productivity is increased, no new products are made, no jobs are created etc. Please do some research on the automated trading networks and look up more than 1 page articles on 'how horrible' a Tobin Tax is. If you think Goldman Sachs is providing a service to civilization by hyper-trading I'd love to hear the argument.

I hate to tell you, but your personal definition of a 'service to civilization' doesn't benefit from a monopoly on the determination of value. If people didn't value shares, there wouldn't be a stock market in the first place. Shares obviously provide value, and some of that value comes from the ability to resell them. If you'd rather have a world without speculative investment, then you're talking about a world where it's very hard for a small business to get any capital whatsoever.

Once that speculative investment has happened, it is anybody's right to resell shares which they own. The rest is just down to human ingenuity. The fact that the resale of those shares doesn't 'do a service to civilization' is largely irrelevant, as it is just a part of a process which provides investment capital for building things, research and productivity.

You have no idea what you're talking about. HFT isn't speculative investment, it's exploitation.

Reikoku

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Activity: 140

Merit: 100

firstbits: 1kwc1p

Quote from: niemivh on July 04, 2011, 03:34:58 AM

I'm assuming you have no idea what you're talking about quoting an article that brief and lacking in any detail. Do you know what a Stock Market is supposed to represent? What does it mean for a company to invest in your stock and then sell it and then buy it again once per nano-second? What does that even mean? Building algorithms that exploit market gyrations to get 0.01% profits over and over again provides no net benefit to the economy. Nothing new gets built, no research is done, no productivity is increased, no new products are made, no jobs are created etc. Please do some research on the automated trading networks and look up more than 1 page articles on 'how horrible' a Tobin Tax is. If you think Goldman Sachs is providing a service to civilization by hyper-trading I'd love to hear the argument.

I hate to tell you, but your personal definition of a 'service to civilization' doesn't benefit from a monopoly on the determination of value. If people didn't value shares, there wouldn't be a stock market in the first place. Shares obviously provide value, and some of that value comes from the ability to resell them. If you'd rather have a world without speculative investment, then you're talking about a world where it's very hard for a small business to get any capital whatsoever.

Once that speculative investment has happened, it is anybody's right to resell shares which they own. The rest is just down to human ingenuity. The fact that the resale of those shares doesn't 'do a service to civilization' is largely irrelevant, as it is just a part of a process which provides investment capital for building things, research and productivity.

AyeYo

full member

Activity: 154

Merit: 103

Why not just straight up ban HFT?

Hawker

legendary

Activity: 1218

Merit: 1001

Quote from: tomcollins on July 04, 2011, 08:39:30 AM

Quote from: niemivh on July 04, 2011, 03:51:44 AM

Quote from: The Script on July 02, 2011, 03:37:18 AM

Quote from: tomcollins on July 01, 2011, 09:39:10 PM

I'd love for someone to tell my why speculation is bad.

I sense a thread derail coming, but yeah I don't see why speculation is so bad.

Apparently that's because both of you aren't aware of how much of it is going on, at least I hope that is the answer. Before I write a 10 page history on this I'll test the waters: do you think that there is any amount of speculation that would be 'too much' or is it fine to have 50 times GDP of a country flowing in and out of that countries capital markets annually?

No, I don't think there is the concept of "too much". Maybe you can explain why. Even just a short summary.

I don't know if the Tobin tax is a good idea but the problem it addresses is huge.

When you try to buy or sell securities, hypertrading is a way that allows the big players to find the maximum price you are willing to pay. They do it by placing and cancelling sales 1000s of times per second when a new buy order appears. The effect is that us peons always pay close to the max we are willing to pay while the Goldman Sachs type institutions pocket the difference between that max and the price the security could be acquired at.

Its thought that transaction tax to eliminate those trades would be helpful. If it provided a buffer for the "too big to fail" banks, so much the better.

Personally I'd worry that the exchange would simply take place somewhere else. I don't know if the tax would work.

AyeYo

full member

Activity: 154

Merit: 103

Quote from: niemivh on July 04, 2011, 04:00:17 AM

Quote from: AyeYo on July 02, 2011, 08:22:27 AM

Maybe just ignore the kids with the black/white worldviews and no understanding of trading and the rest of us can talk about this intelligently.

I'm browsing the wiki page and, without dedicating hours of time to read it all, maybe you can answer my question...

What does this do to retail FX traders? This is always my worry when these type of taxes and regulations pop up. They have a tendacy to hurt the retail guys, while doing little to the multi-billion dollar banks.

Question: Are you hypertrading?
If the answer is no and you are actually using the market as it was originally intended and setup 100s of years ago then is a 1% fee on each transaction going to crush your profits? Are you in for at least a mid-term investment or just a quick buck?

"They have a tendacy to hurt the retail guys, while doing little to the multi-billion dollar banks."

A Tobin Tax would do just the opposite as all the major banks and hedge funds are now using algorithmic trading, hence the large scale resistance to the Tobin Tax (check out the EU and the proposition of a Tobin Tax). They say it will be the end of the world and liquidity will go to 0 and the sky will fall if they have to pay a 1% tax, this is nonsense. There are many benefits that I won't cover here (too late at night, and too long to cover) in the direction of making markets more stable and other benefits beyond just the revenue - which would be immense! I've heard estimates in the Trillions. Do you want to be taxed to help pay off the national debt or do you what the Corporatocracy that has hijacked our government to pay for it?

My issue with it is that I, as a retailed trader, should be able to make short-term moves all day long. A 1% tax isn't going to crush my profits, but that's still 2% of guaranteed loss tacked onto every one of my round trip trades, basically an increased commission. It wouldn't be the end of the world for someone with my trading strategy, but it would for many other retail people. Taxing retail traders does nothing to help the system, but does hurt all the retail traders, and thus their brokerage firms as well.

If this was exclusive to big banks and/or only hold periods in the <5 second range, then I'd be in support of it. As it is, it's just another way to hurt retail traders and banks will undoubtedly find a way around it.

tomcollins

full member

Activity: 182

Merit: 101

Quote from: niemivh on July 04, 2011, 03:51:44 AM

Quote from: The Script on July 02, 2011, 03:37:18 AM

Quote from: tomcollins on July 01, 2011, 09:39:10 PM

I'd love for someone to tell my why speculation is bad.

I sense a thread derail coming, but yeah I don't see why speculation is so bad.

Apparently that's because both of you aren't aware of how much of it is going on, at least I hope that is the answer. Before I write a 10 page history on this I'll test the waters: do you think that there is any amount of speculation that would be 'too much' or is it fine to have 50 times GDP of a country flowing in and out of that countries capital markets annually?

No, I don't think there is the concept of "too much". Maybe you can explain why. Even just a short summary.

Fakeman

full member

Activity: 154

Merit: 100

Why not just impose a 30-day waiting period on currency transactions? People who need currency for 'legitimate' purposes will just need to plan ahead. Grin

Seriously though, what's stopping forex speculators from just using trading services based in countries with no such laws?

niemivh

full member

Activity: 196

Merit: 100

Quote from: AyeYo on July 02, 2011, 08:22:27 AM

Maybe just ignore the kids with the black/white worldviews and no understanding of trading and the rest of us can talk about this intelligently.

I'm browsing the wiki page and, without dedicating hours of time to read it all, maybe you can answer my question...

What does this do to retail FX traders? This is always my worry when these type of taxes and regulations pop up. They have a tendacy to hurt the retail guys, while doing little to the multi-billion dollar banks.

Question: Are you hypertrading?
If the answer is no and you are actually using the market as it was originally intended and setup 100s of years ago then is a 1% fee on each transaction going to crush your profits? Are you in for at least a mid-term investment or just a quick buck?

"They have a tendacy to hurt the retail guys, while doing little to the multi-billion dollar banks."

A Tobin Tax would do just the opposite as all the major banks and hedge funds are now using algorithmic trading, hence the large scale resistance to the Tobin Tax (check out the EU and the proposition of a Tobin Tax). They say it will be the end of the world and liquidity will go to 0 and the sky will fall if they have to pay a 1% tax, this is nonsense. There are many benefits that I won't cover here (too late at night, and too long to cover) in the direction of making markets more stable and other benefits beyond just the revenue - which would be immense! I've heard estimates in the Trillions. Do you want to be taxed to help pay off the national debt or do you what the Corporatocracy that has hijacked our government to pay for it?

niemivh

full member

Activity: 196

Merit: 100

Quote from: The Script on July 02, 2011, 03:37:18 AM

Quote from: tomcollins on July 01, 2011, 09:39:10 PM

I'd love for someone to tell my why speculation is bad.

I sense a thread derail coming, but yeah I don't see why speculation is so bad.

Apparently that's because both of you aren't aware of how much of it is going on, at least I hope that is the answer. Before I write a 10 page history on this I'll test the waters: do you think that there is any amount of speculation that would be 'too much' or is it fine to have 50 times GDP of a country flowing in and out of that countries capital markets annually?

niemivh

full member

Activity: 196

Merit: 100

Quote from: billyjoeallen on July 02, 2011, 07:36:55 AM

Speculators HELP the economy. Their buying and selling provides pricing information. They only profit when they provide good information concerning future demand. They profit from volatility, but by competing with each other, they REDUCE volatility.

More than people that work? More than people that invent? More than people that create?

Seems like there would be more of a public will to try and get back the bailout money that went to Wall St. Many of the well known firms pay nearly no corporate tax, how better do you propose to tax them? How do you reconcile the hyper-trading which is uber-short term parasitical speculation with what a stock market is supposed to be? This is total short term investment to the extreme where the trader has 0 stake in the companies long term (anything beyond a few mirco-seconds) success.

How that can be looked upon as favorable or acceptable is beyond me. Please explain.

niemivh

full member

Activity: 196

Merit: 100

Quote from: Reikoku on July 02, 2011, 04:49:40 AM

Quote from: niemivh on July 01, 2011, 02:33:01 PM

The need for at least a 1% Tobin tax has long been overdue. The amount of speculative money sloshing through the world markets is staggering and a speculative drain on the real economy. In addition the advent of hyper-trading and flash-trading is another toxic poison to the real stock market of capital investors, entrepreneurs and businesses. In addition, it is the most feasible way to shift the burden of closing the deficit from the backs of the pillaged and raped middle-class to the bailout taking parasites on Wall Street.

If you don't know about the Tobin Tax and how it could close the deficit and fix many problems of our existing system then please read up on it.

For those that have already done their homework and know the benefits that a Tobin tax would have please PM me. I'm diving into doing more 'hard research' targeted specifically at this issue exclusively in order to build my website.

I need help: researching, making animated videos, website design, essay writing.

If you'd like to help please PM me and we can start a conversation.

Thanks.

Am I right in assuming you don't work in finance and have never done so? A 1% Tobin tax is utterly unthinkable. Ask the Swedish, who used far smaller Tobin taxes, what became of that experiment.

I'm assuming you have no idea what you're talking about quoting an article that brief and lacking in any detail. Do you know what a Stock Market is supposed to represent? What does it mean for a company to invest in your stock and then sell it and then buy it again once per nano-second? What does that even mean? Building algorithms that exploit market gyrations to get 0.01% profits over and over again provides no net benefit to the economy. Nothing new gets built, no research is done, no productivity is increased, no new products are made, no jobs are created etc. Please do some research on the automated trading networks and look up more than 1 page articles on 'how horrible' a Tobin Tax is. If you think Goldman Sachs is providing a service to civilization by hyper-trading I'd love to hear the argument.

AyeYo

full member

Activity: 154

Merit: 103

Maybe just ignore the kids with the black/white worldviews and no understanding of trading and the rest of us can talk about this intelligently.

I'm browsing the wiki page and, without dedicating hours of time to read it all, maybe you can answer my question...

What does this do to retail FX traders? This is always my worry when these type of taxes and regulations pop up. They have a tendacy to hurt the retail guys, while doing little to the multi-billion dollar banks.

billyjoeallen

legendary

Activity: 1106

Merit: 1007

Hide your women

Speculators HELP the economy. Their buying and selling provides pricing information. They only profit when they provide good information concerning future demand. They profit from volatility, but by competing with each other, they REDUCE volatility.

Reikoku

full member

Activity: 140

Merit: 100

firstbits: 1kwc1p

Quote from: niemivh on July 01, 2011, 02:33:01 PM

The need for at least a 1% Tobin tax has long been overdue. The amount of speculative money sloshing through the world markets is staggering and a speculative drain on the real economy. In addition the advent of hyper-trading and flash-trading is another toxic poison to the real stock market of capital investors, entrepreneurs and businesses. In addition, it is the most feasible way to shift the burden of closing the deficit from the backs of the pillaged and raped middle-class to the bailout taking parasites on Wall Street.

If you don't know about the Tobin Tax and how it could close the deficit and fix many problems of our existing system then please read up on it.

For those that have already done their homework and know the benefits that a Tobin tax would have please PM me. I'm diving into doing more 'hard research' targeted specifically at this issue exclusively in order to build my website.

I need help: researching, making animated videos, website design, essay writing.

If you'd like to help please PM me and we can start a conversation.

Thanks.

Am I right in assuming you don't work in finance and have never done so? A 1% Tobin tax is utterly unthinkable. Ask the Swedish, who used far smaller Tobin taxes, what became of that experiment.

Topic: Tobin Tax. Anyone want to help me build the Tobin Tax website? - page 6. (Read 10224 times)