Dark Pools Quotes

In a flash order transaction, buy or sell orders are shown to a collection of high-frequency traders for just 30 milliseconds before they are routed to everyone else. They are widely considered to give the few investors with access to the technology an unfair advantage, even by some of the marketplaces that offer the flash orders for a fee.

Electronic communications networks match trades between investors directly, without using a market maker or specialist as an intermediary.

High-frequency traders are firms all around the world. They're massive investments. And there is an incredible race for speed now. People are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to shave milliseconds off.

Stock exchanges say that more than half of all trades are now executed by just a handful of high-frequency traders, who use rapid-fire computers to essentially force slower investors to give up profits, then disappear before anyone knows what happened.

I have very little respect for the integrity of the trading on the exchange in most stocks. And I have particular disdain for the fact that the SEC has failed to deal with high-frequency traders who are doing nothing more than taking advantage of inside information, a buy or a sell order, because of technology advantages.

The idea that big buyside firms are going to come in and trade mano-a-mano with high-frequency trading firms shows a lack of knowledge of the business.

High-frequency traders are firms all around the world. They're massive investments.

In the past, NASDAQ has defended flash orders.

We built a market at IEX that does not sell certain types of technology advantages to high-frequency traders, and as a result, the high-frequency traders that didn't rely on buying those advantages trade on IEX.

While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, flash orders are currently allowed because of a loophole in securities regulations that allows for immediate trades.

We can prevent unfair advantage, and we can avoid the destabilizing effect that high frequency trading can have.

When we had the 'flash crash' in 2010, where the price of some stocks briefly fell to zero, high-frequency trading played a big role in that event.