Is HFT Ready to Take Over the World?

High-frequency trading may be poised to take over the world. While high-frequency traders in the United States and Europe increasingly are looking to expand into emerging markets, exchanges in places such as Brazil and India have been actively increasing their capacity in terms of lower latency and throughput. At the same time, regulators in these [...]

US Asks to Seal Courtroom to Guard Goldman Sachs Secrets

U.S. prosecutors asked a federal judge to seal the courtroom for part of the upcoming criminal trial of a former Goldman Sachs computer programmer, an effort to protect the secrecy of the bank’s high-frequency trading platform. * U.S. says Goldman could be harmed if details leaked * Defense seeks to prove no intent to harm [...]

Secret Meeting to Plot End of High Frequency Trading

The SEC’s “definitive”(ly worthless) report on what happened on May 6th was a dud, and was nothing more than a distraction-based smear campaign against Waddell and Reed (an experiment in which we can only hope W&R participated involuntarily): a firm which did something that was completely in its right to do. But is this unexpected? [...]

US Lobby Group Formed For High-Frequency Traders

The Futures Industry Association on Wednesday said it formed a new lobby group to represent high-frequency trading firms that have come under heightened scrutiny for trading practices that may have contributed to Wall Street’s May 6 “flash crash.” The lobby, the Principal Traders Group (PTG), represents a who’s who of high-frequency traders, including Getco LLC [...]

Circuit Breaker Stops Trades of Citigroup

An experimental circuit breaker for stock markets that was put in place after last month’s so-called flash crash kicked in for the second time on Tuesday after an erroneous trade caused a sudden plunge in the price of Citigroup shares. Trading in the shares of Citigroup, one of the most heavily traded stocks in the [...]

Monsters in the Market

On the third floor of Citigroup’s Manhattan headquarters, at the far end of a trading floor overlooking the Hudson River, Young Kang, Citi’s global head of algorithmic products, leans over a terminal and monitors the progress of a canny and powerful beast named Dagger. Bred and trained in secret by Citi’s financial engineers, Dagger can [...]

Ron Insana On HFT

Hey Ron, didn’t realize your new position as a contributing editor on CNBC came with the contributing title of “Portfolio Manager.” Didn’t Stevie put a one year kibbosh on that? But I digress… And in all honesty I am surprised that you seem to have the correct spin on things (as per letter below from [...]

Goldman’s Ed Canaday On The Requirements For High Frequency Trading Oversight

Damage control… Or is Goldman a little worried what Direct Edge may disclose. From the appended Schumer piece on Bloomberg: “Goldman Sachs believes high-frequency trading should have an accompanying obligation to provide liquidity, and be subject to appropriate regulatory oversight,” Canaday said. Ed, we have been giving you the chance to provide your side of [...]