On Tue 2003-12-23T10:13:10 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] hath writ: > The whole point of arbitrage is to know (and act on) what other people > don't know, or or don't know yet. In the 1s-precision regime, people > who have access to data that comes to them less than 1s faster than > others don't gain any benefit from it. With more accurate timestamping, > more accurate reflection of the value of timely data is possible.
How likely is it that some sort of leap second arbitrage is an unspoken motivating factor for discontinuation? It would obviously be something that a system operator would not want to advertise. The interactions of the systems are the point to ponder, especially given that there have been several different ways in which systems handle the timestamps around leap seconds. Basically, there have been schemes like any of the following UTC oldBSD newkernels duplicate 59.00 59.00 59.00 59.00 59.20 59.10 59.20 59.20 59.40 59.20 59.40 59.40 59.60 59.30 59.60 59.60 59.80 59.40 59.80 59.80 60.00 59.50 00.00 59.00 60.20 59.60 00.00+eps 59.20 60.40 59.70 00.00+2*eps 59.40 60.60 59.80 00.00+3*eps 59.60 60.80 59.90 00.00+4*eps 59.80 00.00 00.00 00.00+5*eps 00.00 00.20 00.20 00.20 00.20 Does the system which actually duplicates timestamps permit the appearance of knowing the future for the sake of a transaction? There were several Jun/Jul leap seconds during the 1990s. The Dec 31 leap seconds happen on Jan 1 in AustralAsia, and that is likely to be a holiday, so no big problem happens. But the Jun 30 leap seconds happen on Jul 1 in AustralAsia, and that is a business day more often than not. The Sydney market is definitely open, and the Tokyo markets seem to be in the pre-trading phase at 0h UTC. Obviously the situation grows worse as markets expand their trading hours toward 24x7 operation. Another question is, can you really move enough capital through the Sydney markets in one second to make the effort worthwhile? What would the response of the IERS be if some market executives asked them to avoid June 30 leap seconds whenever July 1 was a business day? -- Steve Allen UCO/Lick Observatory Santa Cruz, CA 95064 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Voice: +1 831 459 3046 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla PGP: 1024/E46978C5 F6 78 D1 10 62 94 8F 2E 49 89 0E FE 26 B4 14 93