In what ways is IEX different than a typical dark pool or a typical exchange?
You've said what's different in your question. There's 330 microseconds of network latency between IEX and anywhere else, so HFTs can't get information about trades in progress on IEX and use it to jump in ahead of those traders on other exchanges. All exchanges should have artificially induced latency of this kind so that if a trade is submitted simultaneously to all exchanges it reaches the furthest away one before a response can be received from the closest one, thus preventing HFT techniques.
SEO or Search engine optimization is the process of trying to increase quality Traffic to the website (your) Search Enigne variety of different ways. Usually websites appear on the first Search Engine in common than is often click the website below. Or Next Typically, the goal of SEO is in many places such as Image Search, Video Search, but we spent most of Web Search. "The ""hidden"" fees in any transfer are usually: Foreign exchange transfer services are usually the cheapest option for sending money abroad when a conversion is involved. They tend to offer ways to get the money to or from them cheaply or for free and they typically offer low or no fees plus much better exchange rates than the alternatives. My preferred foreign exchange service is XE Trade. It looks like they support CAD to ZAR transfers so you might check them out.  In my experience, they have not set a minimum on the amount I send although it does impact the exchange rate they will offer.  The rate is still better than other alternatives available to me though. Note that for large enough transfers, the exchange rate difference will dominate all other costs.  For example, if you transfer $10,000 and you pay $100 for the transfer plus $50 in wire fees ($150 in fees) but get a 2% better exchange rate than a ""free"" service, you would save $50 by choosing the non free service." &gt; There are growing signs that the business of high-speed trading, or electronic market-making as it is sometimes called, is shrinking because of the steadily declining volume on the world’s stock exchanges over the last four years.  Why is it shrinking? Less trading or more OTC and dark pools? &gt;Since gold in this very simple hypothetical system has absolutely no use other than a store of value, it is debt.  But gold does have other uses. It is a metal that's used for jewelry, it has decorative value. Exchanging something for gold is like a caveman giving you a stone ax if you do some cave paintings for him.  If all the civilization disappeared, gold would still have a value, different from bank notes.  Gold is a convenient standard commodity for exchange for several reasons: it's indestructible, it's compact, it's easily recognizable. All the gold ever mined in the world would fit inside a typical five-story apartment building. Yet it doesn't burn, doesn't spoil, can be stored forever, different from apples or oranges.  &gt;these firms would be adjusting their capacity, and not sitting on trillions of dollars of currency that ought to be liquid.   Here s where the difference between actual work that has been performed and a promise make a real difference. These companies are sitting on trillions of dollars of promises, not products. What they have is paper, shares, bonds, debentures, whatever.   They are unable to transform those papers into products, because they lack the manufacturing capacity to do so. They do not have a million apples, they have a paper where the farmer said he would grow a million apples.  Overall, the corporations in the US have invested heavily in acquisitions of other corporations, this trend has been going on for several decades now. These papers cannot be easily converted into anything useful. For the moment they are just there, with their nominal value that people agreed upon. It's not easy to turn that investment into production. But if you add a security to the index you also remove one from the index, thus both a buy and sell. If weights change some go up, some go down thus some need to be purchased and some need to be sold.   So I still don't see how ETFs are net sinks beyond their simple AUM. "Can you give me evidence that HFT front running is happening? Better yet, can you tell me how, given current market structure, front running is even possible? Don't just tell me ""order types"" and ""faster"", because that doesn't directly lead to front running. In fact, why don't you start by defining what you think to be front running? I have a feeling that will clear up a lot of your apparent misunderstanding.  In the meantime, you're just regurgitating Flash Boys / CNBC hype.  Also, it's a fallacy to say that people ""believe"" in the mission of IEX simply because there's volume there. Market participants will connect to any liquidity source, based purely on their endless quest for more liquidity...  EDIT: By the way, being faster than someone is *not* front running. It's being faster than them. I want to make sure you understand this distinction before venturing into matters you're obviously *very* unfamiliar with." Index Funds & ETFs, if they are tracking the same index, will be the same in an ideal world. The difference would be because of the following factors: Expense ratio: i.e. the expense the funds charge. This varies and hence it would lead to a difference in performance. Tracking error: this means that there is a small percentage of error between the actual index composition and the fund composition. This is due to various reasons.  Effectively this would result in the difference between values. Demand / Supply: with ETFs, the fund is traded on stock exchanges like a stock. If the general feeling is that the index is rising, it could lead to an increase in the price of the ETF. Index funds on the other hand would remain the same for the day and are less liquid. This results in a price increase / decrease depending on the market. The above explains the reason for the difference.   Regarding which one to buy, one would need to consider other factors like: a) How easy is it to buy ETFs? Do you already hold Demat A/C & access to brokers to help you conduct the transaction or do you need to open an additional account at some cost. b) Normally funds do not need any account, but are you OK with less liquidity as it would take more time to redeem funds. "There are a few different ""kinds"" of implied volatility. They are all based on the IVs obtained from the option pricing model you use. (1) Basically, given a few different values (current stock price, time until expiration, right of option, exercise style, strike of the option, interest rates, dividends, etc), you can obtain the IV for a given option price. If you look at the bid of an option, you can calculate the IV for that bid. If you look at the ask, there's a different IV for the ask. You can then look at the mid price, then you have a different IV, and so on and so on. And that's for each strike, in each expiration cycle! So you have a ton of different IVs. (2) In many option trading platforms, you'll see another kind of IV: the IV for each specific expiration cycle. That's calculated based on some of the IVs I mentioned on topic (1). Some kind of aggregation (more on this later). (3) Finally, people often talk about ""the IV of stock XYZ"". That's, again, an aggregation calculated from many of the IVs mentioned on topic (1). Now, your question seems to be: which IVs, from which options, from which months, with which weight, are part of the expiration cycle IV or for the IV of the stock itself? It really depends on the trading platform you are talking about. But very frequently, people will use a calculation similar to how the CBOE calculates the VIX. Basically, the VIX is just like the IV described on topic (3) above, but specifically for SPX, the S&P 500 index. The very detailed procedure and formulas to calculate the VIX (ie, IV of SPX) is described here: http://cfe.cboe.com/education/vixprimer/about.aspx If you apply the same (or a similar) methodology to other stocks, you'll get what you could call ""the IV of stock XYZ""."