Standard Bank releasing their results for the half year to June

Standard Bank releasing their results for the half year to June. Man, if I have to say that bank earnings are complicated that is an understatement of epic proportions. There is so much "stuff" that goes on inside of a bank that even a sophisticated shareholder would struggle to understand. Here goes, here are the highlights, HEPS at 381.9 cps, dividend unchanged at 141 cps, Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio lower at 11.8 percent. The consumer might be set for a rebound, at least this is how I read it from this commentary part: "In a period characterised by continued low interest rates and increasing uncertainty about the global outlook, banking revenues were constrained. This was balanced by a steady improvement in customers' debt profiles, allowing impairment charges to almost halve."



I thought that this was an awesome snippet. Check it out, it has to do with high frequency trading, here is an explanation first from Wiki: "In very broad terms, high-frequency trading (also known as HFT) refers to the buying and selling of stocks at extremely fast speeds with the help of powerful computers. Using complex algorithms, these computers can scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously, execute millions of orders a second, and alter strategies in a matter of milliseconds. In the U.S., high-frequency trading firms represent 2.0% of the approximately 20,000 firms operating today, but account for 73.0% of all equity trading volume."



And then a tweet from a trader type that I follow: " optionmonster A fly can react to something it sees and change direction in 30 milliseconds. HFT trades in 1 milliseconds, so HFT wins" These trading systems are faster than a fly's reactions, and a fly is considered the best adapted creature for flying. The more crazy part is the absolute deluge of volume from these trading machines.