Retail investors are angry!

Last night, a piece of news about quantitative trading went viral online, particularly against the backdrop of a broad market decline yesterday, sparking heated discussions and protests among retail investors! Subsequently, media interviews with relevant personnel from brokerage firms received the response that "no notification has been received yet"! Today at noon, China Securities Journal interviewed quantitative private equity personnel, who responded: they have not received any notification regarding the brokerage's withdrawal of exclusive trading equipment! Both pieces of news simply stated that no notifications were received, without denying one point: the brokerage has exclusive equipment for quantitative institutions! Why do quantitative trading institutions need exclusive equipment set up at brokerages? The core purpose is to gain unparalleled speed advantages, extreme system stability, and professional customized services, which can also be termed as an "arms race" around quantitative trading technology!

1) Trading speed is the lifeline of quantitative strategies. Servers hosted at brokerages or even in exchange data centers achieve the closest physical distance, reducing network latency from milliseconds (one-thousandth of a second) to microseconds (one-millionth of a second). In contrast, ordinary retail investors face trading delays of up to 300 milliseconds, you can do the math to see the difference in multiples.

2) Stability and independence of trading channels. Using independent trading units or exclusive equipment avoids sharing channels with a large number of ordinary investors, preventing congestion during volatile market fluctuations. This means that during a buying spree, the quant can grab shares first, and when escaping, they can also get away first...

3) Brokerages provide customized services. Brokerages offer hardware acceleration, exclusive ultra-fast market data, and personalized algorithmic trading tools as customized services to meet the specific needs of different quantitative strategies. To put it in an inappropriate analogy: retail investors are barehanded, while quants are armed with machine guns, and this exclusive equipment is like putting a machine gun at the retail investor's forehead, leaving no safety distance...

Regarding quantitative issues, the sentinel has discussed this numerous times over the past two years, with retail investors calling for the cancellation of quantitative trading, but the sentinel's conclusion has always been pessimistic: it cannot be canceled! Previously, when the market was poor, there were some actions to restrict high-frequency quant trading; but now that the market is doing well (the management is looking at the index), under a slow bull pattern, canceling quant trading is even less likely. Thus, for the past two years, the sentinel has been saying: if retail investors want to survive in this market, they can only go against the grain of quant trading—quant trading relies on speed and high-frequency trading;

retail investors can only trade less, focus on medium to long-term strategies, and let them stir things up! Today, the market rebounded from the bottom, the index rose broadly, and individual stocks diverged. There were no particularly favorable news, just a volatile trend with ups and downs. The biggest highlight today was the power grid equipment concept, which saw a surge in limit-up stocks, triggered by: NVIDIA will hold a summit on data center power shortages!

Regarding the issue of "America's power shortage," the sentinel has analyzed this multiple times before; in fact, the market has always known, but has been unwilling to speculate, and today, NVIDIA's news successfully ignited this topic, stimulating market speculation enthusiasm. According to data disclosed by American gas turbine giant GE Vernova: the company's gas turbine production capacity has been sold out until 2028, and only 10% remains for 2029. The primary power generation for American data centers relies on gas turbines, and the above data reflects the severity of America's "power shortage". Overall, by 2026, the issue of "America's power shortage" will continue to attract attention!