"Too Fast To Fail: Is High-Speed Trading the Next Wall Street Disaster?"

[applegrove]

Too Fast To Fail: Is High-Speed Trading the Next Wall Street Disaster?

By Nick Baumann at Mother Jones

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/high-frequency-trading-danger-risk-wall-street

"SNIP.........................................


At 9:30 A.M. on August 1 a software executive in a spread-collar shirt and a flashy watch pressed a button at the New York Stock Exchange, triggering a bell that signaled the start of the trading day. Milliseconds after the opening trade, buy and sell orders began zapping across the market's servers with alarming speed. The trades were obviously unusual. They came in small batches of 100 shares that involved nearly 150 different financial products, including many stocks that normally don't see anywhere near as much activity. Within three minutes, the trade volume had more than doubled from the previous week's average.

Soon complex computer programs deployed by financial firms swooped in. They bought undervalued stocks as the unusual sales drove their prices down and sold overvalued ones as the purchases drove their prices up. The algorithms were making a killing, and human traders got in on the bounty too.

Within minutes, a wave of urgent email alerts deluged top officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission. On Wall Street, NYSE officials scrambled to isolate the source of the bizarre trades. Meanwhile, across the Hudson River, in the Jersey City offices of a midsize financial firm called Knight Capital, panic was setting in. A program that was supposed to have been deactivated had instead gone rogue, blasting out trade orders that were costing Knight nearly $10 million per minute. And no one knew how to shut it down. At this rate, the firm would be insolvent within an hour. Knight's horrified employees spent an agonizing 45 minutes digging through eight sets of trading and routing software before they found the runaway code and neutralized it.

By then it was shortly after 10 a.m., and officials from the NYSE, other major exchanges, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority were gathering for an emergency conference call. It didn't end until 4 p.m.

..........................................SNIP"

[Lasher]

1. It's a disaster already

and has been for years.

[RKP5637]

2. The entire corrupt mess is going to eventually fly apart. It's like waiting for an earthquake, every

one knows it's coming, they just can't predict exactly when, but it's coming.

[benld74]

3. urgent email alerts

HILARIOUS! And thats about the size of the warnings involved when an if something like this happens folk!

EMAIL Alerts!

For something that can buy and sell stocks at a speeds amasingly fast

EMAIL ALERTS

You've been wiped out!!!!

[Initech]

4. How can these criminals keep getting away with this shit?

HSBC launders billions to dangerous Mexican drug cartels and they get a $2 billion slap on the wrist.

These Wall St. loons are robbing us stupid and tanking the economy in the process- they don't get punished. They're too <insert adjective here> to fail.

[Marie Marie]

5. Release Elizabeth Warren on their greedy asses.

I wish there wasn't just 1 of her - sigh!