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In the Balance: Markets Feel the Fear

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17/02/2018 GMT

Markets Feel the Fear

BBC World Service - In the Balance, Markets Feel the Fear

Market swings are back, but is it also fuelled by computers?

Ed Butler asks why volatility is back in the financial markets, after years of relative calm

In the Balance examines the recent sharp falls in the global markets. Ed Butler asks why volatility is back in the financial markets - after years of relative calm. Ed is joined by one of the world's leading experts in algorithmic computerised trading as well as a fund manager with more than 30 years experience of watching the market highs and lows. But is this time different - is computer driven trading at least partly to blame for an increase in volatility? Should we be in fear of the machines?

Contributors: Gervais Williams, from Miton Group, who has worked in finance in the City of London for more than 30 years
Economics Professor Jeffrey Frankel from Harvard University
Andrei Kirilenko, the Director of the Centre for Global Finance and Technology at London's Imperial College Business School


(Picture: Traders React to market volatility on floor of  the Cboe Global Markets exchange on February 6, 2018 in Chicago. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

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