There has been a steady increase in the use of computing power to give the financial institutions an even stronger edge and strangle hold over how markets are traded, and dominated by the one percent of wealth controllers in the world. With regards to how computers and developments like artificial intelligence are affecting how these institutional edges are growing, we have no farther to look than which technologies are being funded by the largest wealth holders.

One of the most advanced trading technology companies was recently pushed on to the world stage, when whistleblower Eric Snowden mentioned a company called "Palantir" in regards to his revelations that  US government agencies were leveraging techologies at the bleeding edge to collect metadata on Americans using their phones domestically. A closer look at Palantir however shows us that finance, technology - and governments are becoming increasingly strange bedfellows.

In this article, Forbes talks about Palantir - a mega powerful software package - and who is using it:"

"Well, for starters, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, with also one the most sophisticated quant teams, is an outspoken user of Metropolis - the new name for Palantir Finance....In financial analysis, Palantir Metropolis can provide the big-picture, collaborative structure, which allows sophisticated users to target their advanced quant deep dives more effectively."

The future of trading it seems, is no longer a mastery of technical indicators - the type of revolution we saw in the 90's and early 2000's. Now - it's about who controls the data.

Google - is now making it's global network of connected computer infrastructure available to financial institutions, in part because it has a unique and unparalleled ability to sync it's data around the world - to the same time - using GPS satellites. Listen to how important TIME is to that ability, in this article:

"No one else has ever built a system like this. No one else has taken hold of time in the same way. And now Google is offering this technology to the rest of the world as a cloud computing service. 

Google believes this can provide some added leverage in its battle with Microsoft and Amazon for supremacy in the increasingly important cloud computing market, just because Spanner is unique. And some agree. “If they offer it, people will want it, and people will use it,” says Peter Bailis, an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University who specializes in massively distributed software systems."

They go on to tell us:

"The volume of data—and velocity with which that data is coming at us—is amplifying significantly,” says JDA group vice president John Sarvari.

Spanner could also be useful in the financial markets, allowing big banks to more efficiently track and synchronize trades happening across the planet. And Google says it’s already in talks with large financial institutions about this kind of thing. Traditionally, many banks were wary of handling trades in the cloud for reasons of security and privacy. But those attitudes are softening. A few years ago, Spanner was something only Google needed. Now, Google is banking on change.

It seems traders who are relying on the same paradigm of lagging technical indicators - beholden to the traditional regime of "trading room gurus" have ever increasing competition with an ever dwindling edge pool. Once Google unleashes the power of it's "Spanner" infrastructure - traders who are not using leading data mining indicators like the FLUX system of Ninjatrader indicators will find themselves at a severe disadvantage.