Sorry, not having read the book and with just this blog post as context I don't understand the problem. Why wouldn't an HFT company want to own a microwave tower that transmits stock prices? why is that unethical? seems perfectly reasonable and like it would be a useful to the business. Am I missing out on some piece of information.
I think the blog post is trying (and failing) to encourage a sense of moral outrage that the SEC, who is the watchdog agency for some HFT firms, is buying services from an HFT firm.
They are piggy backing on the press from the book (the blog post is from months ago when the book came out) to bring this back into the conversation as it has been clear for some time that the SEC is paying for technology from an HFT firm. The book doesn't point this out by the way, but it was public knowledge.
Personally, I'd like to know who is in a better position to provide the technologies to understand HFT than a HFT firm? I would be suspicious of any vendor that claimed they could provide a platform for this that wasn't in the industry.
Also, as a bit of context Themis Trading (the blog posters) is an execution trading house. That is, they make their money by making trades for large institutions with the express value add of being able to get the lowest execution prices. This is precisely the kind of thing HFT has made cheap/redundant. That is they are natural competitors to HFT firms.
It may be true that there are no disinterested players in this debate. But his overall point is that the SEC paid an HFT firm to supply systems that would be used to oversee HFT, and that seems worth repeating regardless of his own interest in the matter.
Not really, Thesys is a technology provider to many firms. Providers include financial services firms, trading companies and regulation authorities. If the SEC purchased the technology (Or spend more money to build it themselves) they would be ridiculed for having inferior technology.
The point is that the people providing the technology have an interest in the SEC not deciding to push for additional, non-HFT friendly market rules.
Is it possible that there's no way to get it besides from a company which might/probably/definitely have a conflict of interest? Yes. Does that somehow negate said conflict of interest? No.
It has been a while since the book was published; and yet it wasn't mainstream media that brought this fact and the conflict of interest it entailed to the fore.
