Father of HFT: Slow Down

Thomas Peterffy is one of the pioneers of automated stock trading. From NPR’s Planet Money:

…The company he started, Interactive Brokers, does electronic trades on a mind-boggling scale. Forbes estimates his net worth is now over $5 billion.

Peterffy says automation has done some very good things for the world. It’s made buying and selling stocks much much cheaper for everyone.

But Peterffy thinks the race for speed is doing more harm than good now. “We are competing at milliseconds,” he says. “And whether you can shave three milliseconds of an order, has absolutely no social value.”

Here are previous MR posts on high frequency trading.