The small town of Aurora, Illinois – best known for being Wayne's hometown in Wayne's World – has another peculiar appeal to its location: it is one of the closest places that high frequency traders can get to the $63 billion CME Group exchange, where futures and derivatives on commodities and US treasuries trade making it a mecca for HFTs seeking to frontrun slower orderflow. That makes local real-estate extremely coveted, as detailed in a recent Bloomberg follow up to Michael Lewis' "Flash Boys". 

The story is familiar to anyone who has been reading this website for the past decade, or leafed through Michael Lewis' HFT thriller: the closer traders can collocate to the CME, the more likely they are to shave off milliseconds from their trades, resulting in frontrunning of slower orderflow that can net them millions. For instance, this small brick hut is owned by New Line Networks a joint venture of HFT giants Jump Trading and Virtu Financial: the two paid $14 million for the land just to be close to the CME Group.