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Business Daily: High Frequency Trading: Trouble Ahead?

07/04/2014

High Frequency Trading: Trouble Ahead?

BBC World Service - Business Daily, High Frequency Trading: Trouble Ahead?

Is high frequency trading making financial markets impenetrable to ordinary investors?

Is high frequency trading, or HFT, making financial markets impenetrable to ordinary investors? Has it rigged markets? America's authorities, including the FBI, are investigating.

Is high frequency trading  - super fast trading via computers - making financial markets impenetrable to ordinary investors? American authorities, including the FBI, are investigating after the author Michael Lewis' latest book Flash Boys, argues that thanks to HFT, US stock markets are now rigged by traders who go to great lengths to gain a millisecond edge over their rivals. The BBC's Lawrence Knight draws on his experience as an investment banker to explain how HFT works. And we debate the rights and wrongs of HFT with Dan Marcus, CEO of ParFX, an electronic trading platform which has devised a system that puts a brake on the speed at which high frequency traders trade, and Eric Scott Hunsader, software developer at the market technology firm Nanex in Chicago. 

Plus, our regular commentator Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times wonders what all this computer-induced chaos has done for our working lives.

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