The Federal Reserve announced a move that sent the bond market into a frenzy of loading and unloading. The information weirdly got out five milliseconds early, and while that doesn't seem like a long time, it was enough for some high-speed trading computers to do their thing.

Somehow some traders in Chicago got the news early, and it usually takes seven milliseconds for the news to travel from where it's sent out in New York. The traders cheated physics because they started trading 2-3 milliseconds after the news hit the wire.

5 milliseconds is not enough time to form a decision. But the traders don't have to. They instead rely on pre-programmed high frequency trading systems that react for them the instant news hits. They can buy, sell and hedge and gamble faster than they can think. Five milliseconds is actually a lot of time for the systems to react.

[CNBC via MoJo]