"Obscene profits" in micro transactions. It's not about Google. It's about HFTP s and Goldman Sachs. What might it mean for Print.

This appeared in the morning email from Seeking Alpha. Snippets follow. You can get the whole story at Seeking Alpha.

. . the profits are obscene: $21 billion spread out amongst the 100 or so firms who engage in this (Goldman Sachs (GS) is the undisputed king controlling an estimated 21% of all High Frequency Trading).

In this way, the trading program makes ½ a penny (one ¼ for buying from the broker and another ¼ for selling to the institution) AND makes the institutional trader pay a penny more on the shares.

Did you know that

this kind of nonsense now comprises 70% OF ALL MARKET TRANSACTIONS.

A lesson for Print
What if I'm correct about free-to-the-user printed books for everyone by 2011?

Short story is that Print Books will be supported by enabling commerce. Longer story is that book content will become a media, instead of product. They will be an awesome media becuase doing contextually accurate ads in a book is just right. Once the harvestable clickstreams appear by the use of TinyPurls and Smart QR, the customer informatics is the deliverable.

In my not so humble opinion, Google and Amazon are already pretty far along with the content, and technology. The missing piece for now is printing/delivering print books at internet speed and scale, with a minimum carbon footprint. The best way to get a clickstream is clickable print. The only way to get to low carbon footprint at internet speed/scale is the printernet.

A gezillion exchanges at 2 cents an exchange = 2% of a gezillion = "obscene profits." I figure that printers could use some "obscene" profits right about now.

GO PRINT!
Next stop on this train is free clickable newspapers to replace textbooks in bottom of the pyramid high schools and in the market on education non consumption.