Recent high-profile market disruptions caused by advanced trading technologies, including the so-called "flash crash" and Knight Capital’s software-driven collapse, have magnified interest in high-frequency trading. Regulators and legislators are driving to expand surveillance and regulation of high-frequency trading practices. The SEC has solicited a high-frequency trading firm to design a computer program that will, for the first time, afford the regulators real-time monitoring capabilities.1 The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is expanding its regulatory oversight of high-frequency trading as directed in the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
While the United States has not yet formulated a cohesive plan of action, countries around the globe are responding to similar concerns, advancing or enacting legislation to impose limits on high-frequency trading strategies.2
