4 ms·

Why don't they set the minimum trading interval to something larger to unencourage HFT?

• anonymoushn 13y ago
  That doesn't really help. Many symbols already have an artificially wide spread of 1 cent (they could have lower spreads if they were allowed to). Forcing spreads wider would reduce volume and increase per-trade profit for market makers (read: HFT). I'm not sure which factor would dominate, but it would be unlikely to have a big impact on the market makers' bottom lines. On the other hand, retail investors would enjoy the privilege of paying wider spreads,
• crdoconnor 13y ago
  That doesn't really help if the HFT firms can simply pay to be first in line during each tick.
  • nodata 13y ago
    Depends how you implement it (a window for placing bids would be one way).
    • crdoconnor 13y ago
      This wouldn't help either. HFT operators would race to extract as much information from the bidders during the window (e.g. by bid stuffing) and place the bid during the last possible femtosecond before it closes.