There is no particular social benefit to such speed per se, but it does not hurt investors. The speed race is HFT market makers competing with each other to be

There is no particular social benefit to such speed per se, but it does not hurt investors. The speed race is HFT market makers competing with each other to be the first to offer shares at a new price level. When one firm gets faster than others, it hurts other HFTs (because the fast firm can now get bigger market share) but not investors. HFTs do on average make a small profit on each trade: they are in the business of charging investors for liquidity. But the fierce competition between HFTs means that their margins get competed down and they cannot charge very much for liquidity. Their average profit per trade is tiny. The Taiwan stock exchange used to match orders every few seconds, like you suggest, instead of continuously. They switched to continuous trading earlier this year, and they say a little bit about why here: [0]. I might be wrong, but I think there is no rule preventing anyone from setting up a Taiwan-style batch-auction exchange in the US. Note that there are already over a dozen US stock exchanges, each with slightly different rules and order types, each competing for market share. If there's investor demand for a batch-auction exchange in the US, someone could create one and make a bunch of money running it. [0] https://www.twse.com.tw/en/page/products/trading/information13.html https://www.twse.com.tw/en/page/products/trading/information...