QuoteOriginally posted by: hayesIt would be strange to think that a 2 buck pair of wire cutters could've saved Goldman's all of this trouble and potentially millions of dollars to boot.Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in action methinks.

Doesn't relativity all but prohibit this kind of synchronization? Every exchange thinks every other exchange has clocks that are running late.That said, the priority of an order should be driven by some timestamp applied when it first touches any one of the exchanges. There's still the threat of man-in-middle sniffing of orders in all the links between the trader's computer and the exchange. For example, the broker's act of looking at the order to see if the trader can legally execute that order (i.e., sufficient shares or funds) would seem to be a very precarious link indeed.I'd also make all orders have an irrevocable time-to-live -- the offer of liquidity should be binding so that HFT can't fish for volume by dangling large orders on the market.