high frequency trading

The May 6 "flash crash" is still somewhat of an enigma, but an advisory panel meeting on Friday to review a report into it could at least help regulators establish some new market rules to prevent similar crashes from occurring in the future, Reuters reports.

Investing is a jungle, and most of the so-called experts who get quoted in the media are on the prowl with a simple purpose -- to give you a reason to trade. But they don't know much more than you do, and all their arguments ignore a basic reality: The market is now controlled by short-term traders.

The financial media loves to pluck struggling analysts from obscurity and propel them to fame on the backs of a few good calls, then shoot them full of arrows at them when their predictions start to fail. And inevitably, those so-called gurus will fail. Here's why.

For retail investors hoping to build retirement savings or fund kids' education, latency arbitrage skims off some $3 billion a year from their gains. Find out how the practice allows big hedge funds to profit -- without risk -- from a rigged market.

An arms race has begun in the secretive world of high frequency trading, the practice of making a high number of trades netting small gains that can add up to big profits at the end of the day. Fueling the competition is the entry of more players into the field as well as technological advances...

Chalk this one up to the power of the blogosphere. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York stated today that he had received a personal guarantee from Mary Schapiro, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, that a ban on "flash trading" was in the offing, according to Bloomberg News. The practice...