Det är väl ingen nyhet för dig att datorer och algoritmer står för större delen av volymen en vanlig handelsdag på världens börser. Att High frequency trading har kommit för att stanna är klart, men det är en ny och till stora delar outforskad värld. Tekniker testas fortfarande och algoritmer som löper amok kan snabbt orsaka stor skada. Världens marknader reagerar nu på minsta lilla skiftning och en enskild händelse kan snabbt eskalera och förstoras.
WIRED har skrivit en mycket intressant och utförlig artikel om detta fenomen. Mycket läsvärt!
wired.com/business/2012/08/ff_wallstreet_trading/all
Raging Bulls: How Wall Street Got Addicted to Light-Speed Trading
he 2012 New York Battle of the Quants, a two-day conference of algorithmic asset traders, took place in New York City at the end of March, just a few days after a group of researchers admitted they had made a mistake in an experiment that purported to overturn modern physics. The scientists had claimed to observe subatomic particles called neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. But they were wrong; about six months later, they retracted their findings. And while “Special Relativity Upheld” is the world’s most predictable headline, the news that neutrinos actually obey the laws of physics as currently understood marked the end of a brief and tantalizing dream for quants—the physicists, engineers, and mathematicians-turned-financiers who generate as much as 55 percent of all US stock trading. In the pursuit of market-beating returns, sending a signal at faster than light speed could provide the ultimate edge: a way to make trades in the past, the financial equivalent of betting on a horse race after it has been run.
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