In practice it is not as bad as uniform volume throughout the day would be for two reasons:
Market-makers narrow spreads to prevent any low-value-exchange pairings that would be predictable price fluctuations. They do extract some profits in the process.
Volume is much higher near the open and close.
I would guess that any improvements of this scheme would manifest as tighter effective spreads, and a reduction in profits of HFT firms (which seem to provide less value to society than other financial firms).
I had prehaps a bit unjustly tossed the market maker role into that “not real bid/off” bucket. I also agree they do serve to limit the worst case matches. But such a role would simply be unnecessary so I still wonder about the cost in terms of the profits captured by the market makers. Is that a necessary cost in today’s world? Not sure.
And I do say that as someone who is fairly active in the markets and have taken advantage of thin markets in the off market hours sessions where speads can widen up a lot.
In practice it is not as bad as uniform volume throughout the day would be for two reasons:
Market-makers narrow spreads to prevent any low-value-exchange pairings that would be predictable price fluctuations. They do extract some profits in the process.
Volume is much higher near the open and close.
I would guess that any improvements of this scheme would manifest as tighter effective spreads, and a reduction in profits of HFT firms (which seem to provide less value to society than other financial firms).
I had prehaps a bit unjustly tossed the market maker role into that “not real bid/off” bucket. I also agree they do serve to limit the worst case matches. But such a role would simply be unnecessary so I still wonder about the cost in terms of the profits captured by the market makers. Is that a necessary cost in today’s world? Not sure.
And I do say that as someone who is fairly active in the markets and have taken advantage of thin markets in the off market hours sessions where speads can widen up a lot.