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Why Regulators Fail

From a Reuters report on a CTFC meeting discussing high-frequency trading, emphasis mine:

The CFTC’s arcane technology has been outpaced by the state-of-the-art hardware and software used by the traders it polices. It finds itself grappling with the complexities of sub-millisecond trades and terahertz processors as technology becomes an even more vital component of the futures and derivatives markets.

The futures regulator still relies on fax machines to receive some trade information, an anachronism it can no longer afford as it grapples with a five-fold surge in U.S. futures trading volume over the past decade and prepares to take oversight of even larger over-the-counter derivatives markets.

Hat tip: Planet Money

View all comments (5) |

Ryan| 7.15.10 @ 11:04AM

I think that there's a question that needs to be discussed - is all this micro-trading done by computers a true free market? Is it a form of manipulation?

My concern is that it is - I can't jump on my account and make those sorts of trades from my keyboard, and my paltry buys and sells don't move the market price.

Indiana Alex| 7.15.10 @ 3:34PM

High Frequency Trading has done more to add market liquidity than market manipulation. Looking at both the cash and futures markets during the latest "event", the futures market led the recovery quite nicely, as expected.
There are abuses, such as "flashing", (entering and canceling quickly to flash and order that doesn't exist), but this can be done by a keyboard as well as a computer.

More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler

http://spectator.org/blog/2010/07/15/why-regulators-fail

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