In today's financial markets trading floors on which brokers buy and sell shares face-to-face
have increasingly been replaced by lightning-fast electronic systems that use algorithms to
execute astounding volumes of transactions. Trading at the Speed of Light tells the story of
this epic transformation. Donald MacKenzie shows how in the 1990s in what were then the
disreputable margins of the US financial system a new approach to trading?automated
high-frequency trading or HFT?began and then spread throughout the world. HFT has brought new
efficiency to global trading but has also created an unrelenting race for speed leading to a
systematic subterranean battle among HFT algorithms. Focusing on the material political and
economic characteristics of high-frequency trading Trading at the Speed of Light offers a
unique glimpse into its influence on global finance and where it could lead us in the future.
