More Than A Third Of Exchange Orders Last Less Than Half A Second

About a third of orders sent to equities exchanges in the U.S. last for less than half a second, Securities and Exchange Commission head Mary Jo White said in a speech yesterday.

Stock exchange trades

“Trading today is high-tech, high-speed, and widely dispersed among many different trading venues,” said White. “The extremely short-term strategies of high-frequency trading firms represent more than half of all trading volume.”

White said that in light of multiple technical snafus in the last year, most notably the...