Business Commons^™

The Quixotic Quest For Fairness: The Sec's Role In The Rise Of High Frequency Trading, Jan Traflet, William R. Gruver

Faculty Journal Articles

This paper examines the complex factors facilitating the rise of high frequency trading (HFT) from a historical perspective. Over the course of several decades, various stock market regulations and reforms, championed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), created room for HFT to develop and flourish. While advancements in technology initially may appear to be the primary cause of HFT, in fact, HFT could not exist (or at least, not to the extent it does today) if certain rules and older ways of doing business on the exchanges were still in place, and if other regulations did not support its …