High-frequency Trading Out of Control on Wall Street

Jeff Cox
cnbc.com
August 1, 2012

Wednesday morning’s stock snafu had a familiar ring to it — mysterious volume in trades that simply could not have been made by a human comes surging out of nowhere, causing brief but acute market mayhem.

By now, many players on trading floors have gotten used to the disruptions that can come from the highly automated new world of high-frequency trading.

But that doesn’t mean they like it.

“This algorithmic trading is kind of out of control,” Phil Silverman, managing partner at Kingsview Capital, said as officials at the New York Stock Exchange tried to make sense of what happened. “It seriously hurts investor confidence.”

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This article was posted: Wednesday, August 1, 2012 at 12:18 pm

Tags: economics, financial

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