The Wisconsin State University Computer Center is still busy late at night.

The review committee's scheduling does not take into account the convenience of users, but the convenience of supercomputers.

With a long design and construction cycle, world-class technology and price, a supercomputer is as precious as a warship, and everyone's time and work schedule must be based on its surname.

When Chen Rongxi started to install the software, all the data was quietly hidden in the running meteorological data, and the traffic in gigabytes per second made its hard disk flicker like a warning light, but it did not attract anyone's attention.

There is always a buzzing noise in the computer center, which disturbs people's minds.

The researcher who did the data had a sad face in his mouth and muttered: "Working overtime in the early morning is the most boring, and the speed is so slow." ”

The computer expert who was monitoring nearby looked at it and said, "Let's add two more CPUs." ”

As he spoke, he immediately got to work.

Supercomputers such as the "Kraken" belong to the upgradeable and expandable cabinet structure, and in the large square-like room, there are countless two-meter-high metal cabinets, which contain processors, hard disks, memory and other things.

If needed, the staff in charge of it only needs to plug the wires and data cables into the metal cabinet to make its surname rise.

This is already a relatively common design, and in addition to increasing the life of thousands of various parts of a supercomputer, it also has the effect of saving electricity - the annual electricity bill of any computer center is a blood-spitting figure.

Now, it was found that the calculation of the "Kraken" needed to rise, and the staff did not think much about it at all, first adding 2 sets of processors, and then adding 6 groups.

Different calculations, contents, and even the erosion of time may cause the surname of "Kraken" to drop, and no one knows, at this time "Kraken" is busy testing the "lightning transaction".

From the first day of its birth, the "lightning deal" was met with suspicion from all sides. It is a typical advance trade, like a non-compliant broker, when he receives an instruction from a client to buy a stock from the market at a price of no more than $10, the broker first buys himself at a price of 9.7, and then sells it to his client at a price of $10, thus defrauding $0.3.

The difference is that flash trading does not even need to violate the rules to harm customers, it harms all retail investors, and its advantage comes from the super advanced equipment, compared to the time difference of exchange equipment.

For example, the Pacific Options Exchange's Optimac trading system, the supercomputer it uses is already the leading product in the major exchanges, but it is still lagging behind the "Kraken", even so, its trading system has to bear millions of user instructions per second at the same time, the result is that after receiving trading instructions at the same time, the corresponding supercomputer can see the market information about 0.3 seconds in advance.

It's as if you can predict the future by 0.3 seconds.

This is a fantasy event that happened in the real world and was caused by technology.

In the central standard time zone, at 3 a.m., the computing power of the "Kraken" gradually recovered.

The administrator drank his coffee without noticing it, and didn't even bother to get up to turn off the extra CPU.

Far away on the other side of the world, Chen Yi and Xiaomei clapped their palms vigorously to celebrate the successful installation of the "Lightning Trading" program and the success of the first round of testing.

"If you want to see a deal, just get some sleep." Chen Yi did not shy away from the little sister, but only advised: "No one can say anything about computers, and my mother is no exception." ”

"Understood." The little sister showed a determined look like a squadron leader of the Young Pioneers.

Chen Yi looked at his watch, contacted Tang Xiongfei on the computer, and said: "The time difference between us and New York is 13 hours, that is, around 20:30 in the evening, we started trading. ”

Chen Rongxi had nothing to do, but Tang Xiongfei was on the side of the United States, and asked cautiously: "Mr. Xiao Chen, I only recruited one trader here, and it seems that there is only 100,000 US dollars in the account." ”

"One is enough, let's use the $100,000 to practice first." Chen Yi is shy in his pocket, where is the money coming out.

Tang Xiongfei blinked his eyes and said okay, after turning off the computer, he couldn't figure it out. $100,000, what can you do in the New York stock market? Not to mention using a supercomputer, the rent of that thing is more than $100,000 a day.

Chen Yicai ignored him, went back to the room, and fell asleep.

When the alarm clock rang, he drank the energy recovery potion as if he was taking drugs, and then slowly turned on his computer.

The little sister quietly pushed the door in, sneakily holding her notebook, and suppressed her excitement: "Second brother, really go to NASDAQ to speculate in stocks?" ”

"You can go to stock exchanges all over the United States." Chen Yi was actually excited, but he pretended to be calm and said: "When we have more funds on hand, we will go to the futures market, anyway, it is a transaction that will make a profit without losing money." ”

The little sister nodded as if pounding rice, and said, "If you lose, it means that there is a problem with the software of the French." ”

As she spoke, she had already connected to the "Kraken" through the broiler.

On the American side, the trader had to link her computer first, then the broiler and the kraken.

In this way, it will inevitably slow down the speed of the original advantage, and it will naturally suffer very much if it is replaced by a mainframe with the minimum requirements, but for a supercomputer at the level of "Kraken", it is not even 0.1 seconds to process the exchange information in batches, plus the transmission time of about 0.1 seconds, which is more than enough compared to the advance time of 0.3 seconds.

In fact, countless investment banks have set their supercomputers underground on Wall Street, ostensibly to compete for shorter transmission times, but in essence to reduce costs.

They can't afford to spend hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on a state-of-the-art supercomputer, and as a businessman, they end up choosing a supercomputer that can process transactions in 0.25 seconds, or even 0.27 seconds, and for every 0.01 second saved by communication cables, they can save millions of dollars in fixed capital investment.

In comparison, the high land prices on Wall Street are nothing at all.

Chen Yi reviewed his knowledge about supercomputers while opening the software made by Xinbiyou, here, there are not many things that he needs to deal with, except for a small amount of company information such as entering the amount and bank account, most of the rest is to watch the play of the computer.

In order to succeed in the battle for millimeters, the software itself will try to resist human participation.

It's simply a tech war.

At 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, the fresh ** $100,000 capital began to join the world gambling game centered on New York.

Here, everyone considers themselves to be the strongest and smartest players.

Most of them, trying to get rich by their ingenuity, most of them fail; A few of them, trying to rely on capital appreciation, a few fail; A very small number of them want to make a profit from insider trading, and a very small number of them fail.

And today in 2003, the people who know how to use supercomputers and can afford to use supercomputers are definitely a minority of the very few.

At this time, the power of capital has been diluted by supercomputers. In other words, the supercomputer itself represents capital.

"Control the amount of calculations of the Kraken, and be careful not to exceed the cordon." Chen Yi stared at the screen and said to his little sister.

Chen Rongxi crackled on the keyboard and said: "The software has the function of automatically selecting the remaining time period, and it should not be found if it occupies a total of 15%. Is it enough? ”

"That's a total of $100,000, which is more than enough." Chen Yisun said: "Everyone is billions of dollars, plus 100 times the bank leverage, how much do we have, plus 200 times the leverage." ”

"200 times?" But it was Tang Xiongfei in the dialogue between the three of them, who exclaimed in high decibels in the United States, and he seemed to explain in a persuasive way: "200 times leverage, but it is to take 20 million US dollars from the bank to gamble, if the market fluctuates by 0.5%, we have to force the liquidation......"

The so-called leverage is to use one's own money as a bank margin, and the bank pays the capital for speculation. But if a loss occurs, the bank will ask for a margin call. If the amount of the latter is less than the loss, the bank will automatically sell all your speculative products and thus stop the loss.

Most of the time, it's a win-win situation.

It's also a genius design.

"We're not going to lose a dime." Chen Yi said in a cold voice: "We saw the fluctuations 0.3 seconds earlier than the market. ”

Tang Xiongfei was almost speechless, and while thinking of a way, he held back a sentence: "Where is there a gambling that makes sure you don't lose money." ”

"It's gambling for American stockholders, and it's a tax for us ......." Chen Yi paused and said, "Speed up." ”

"Yes." Tang Xiongfei didn't care to say a few more words, and hurriedly began to contact various banks.

Their capital is too small, and if they want to use more money, they have to endure harsher scrutiny and agree to harsher conditions. On the contrary, perpetual snobs always like to chase after people who don't want to borrow money.

The financial circle is like a tail-biting competition circle, everyone wants to gnaw a piece of meat off the ass of the person in front of them, but they don't care about their ass being licked around.

Half an hour later, Tang Xiongfei tried his best to get 200 times the leverage from Mellon National Bank. This is still allowed by the other party to be released only if they have successfully used 50 times leverage in a row.

In just half an hour, Jinyuan International, which only used 5 million US dollars of leverage as bait, has completed the transaction of 70,000 shares in a row, with a profit of 15,000 US dollars.

This speed is faster than most Wall Street brokers, and the yield is much larger.

If you take into account the advantage of the latter's huge capital, the world's 10th ranked "Kraken" can surpass the supercomputers of almost all brokerages as long as he spends about a third of his free time.

It's actually a natural thing. Ranking among the top 10 in the world means a cross-era computer regardless of the cost. In contrast, the IBM models favored by Wall Street brokers tend to be more mature mid-range goods, and the difference is by no means a star and a half.

Tang Xiongfei came back after making the call, looked at the numbers in the account again, was simply dumbfounded, and couldn't help but say: "My God, when I contacted Mellon, I didn't dare to confirm that we really earned 15,000 dollars in half an hour?" It's too fast. ”

Everyone was still in the state of the conference call, Chen Yi let out a faint "um", and said: "It's not just this number, Tang Xiongfei, you go and contact the traders right now and ask them to cash in our rebates." If you don't ask for this kind of thing, people won't be silent. In addition, the 200x leverage is done, and it will be used immediately. ”

Tang Xiongfei woke up like a dream, agreed, and quickly started the Internet again.

Major exchanges determine rebates based on the number of traders' trades – in a way that is also intended to attract more brokers to focus on the exchange – and is currently small, with only the lowest publicly available figures, ranging from 0.05 cents to 0.29 cents per share.

This is a number that can be applied directly if there is a certain amount of trading.

If you want a higher price, such as those of the big high-frequency traders, you have to negotiate with the exchange.

At the current exchange rate, 0.05 cents is about 0.4 cents, which sounds like a lot, but it corresponds to the word "high frequency", which is also quite significant over time.

If Chen Yi's $100,000 is traded at 150,000 shares per hour, he can get a rebate of more than $10,000 a day, which is more than the average 10% return of loan sharks - and risk-free, compound interest can be calculated.

Of course, in reality, the opening and closing of the market are the most frequent trading stages, and they are also the stages with the largest differences, and the trading speed at other times is slower. In addition, normal small brokerages are constrained by the lack of high-tech equipment, while large brokerages are constrained by the lack of opportunities in the market.

In comparison, the existence of the "Kraken" seems to be an unsolvable bug. Its computing power is so powerful, and the amount of money it makes is so small. Then the arbitrage opportunities encountered in the market with large profits are destined to be eaten by it first.

Even if the amount of money continues to increase, with the computing power required, it will still be the hegemon in high-frequency trading.

In this era of high-frequency trading, investors who can't see the direction are even trading on a mainframe, and where is the Kraken's opponent.

Funds in the account are pooled quickly.

When Tang Xiongfei finalized the automatic payment agreement and returned with the poor $2,000, the number in the account had increased by 20,000.

He counted the 6-digit numbers for a long time, but said angrily: "It's so unfair, the money I earned in this 1 hour is higher than my salary in a year." ”

"If you want a raise, you have to get a bigger lever."

Chen Rongxi said staggeringly: "If we have 200 times leverage, we will have 3.3 million ...... Now it's $3.7 million, and it's still up? ”

Although she is the daughter of the Chen family, she has never seen an account of more than 40 million yuan.

"Have you ever played the game of big fish eating small fish?" Chen Yi patted her head and said, "In the pool of Wall Street, with a supercomputer, we are the protagonists." The higher the leverage, the more food will be added. ”

……

(To be continued)