Charles Duhigg Quotes

We can prevent unfair advantage, and we can avoid the destabilizing effect that high frequency trading can have.

I have very little respect for the integrity of the trading on the exchange in most stocks. And I have particular disdain for the fact that the SEC has failed to deal with high-frequency traders who are doing nothing more than taking advantage of inside information, a buy or a sell order, because of technology advantages.

Stock exchanges say that more than half of all trades are now executed by just a handful of high-frequency traders, who use rapid-fire computers to essentially force slower investors to give up profits, then disappear before anyone knows what happened.

High-frequency traders are firms all around the world. They're massive investments. And there is an incredible race for speed now. People are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to shave milliseconds off.

When we had the 'flash crash' in 2010, where the price of some stocks briefly fell to zero, high-frequency trading played a big role in that event.

We built a market at IEX that does not sell certain types of technology advantages to high-frequency traders, and as a result, the high-frequency traders that didn't rely on buying those advantages trade on IEX.

How can you allow the trading companies to locate computers closer to exchanges and flash millions of bids to give an unfair advantage?... Even professionals are losing faith in some aspects of the system.

While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, flash orders are currently allowed because of a loophole in securities regulations that allows for immediate trades.

In the past, NASDAQ has defended flash orders.

High-frequency traders are firms all around the world. They're massive investments.

We live in an age of great jitteriness in the financial markets. And there's no doubt at all, I think, that the volume of computer-traded stocks has helped contribute to that.

Insider trading tells everybody at precisely the wrong time that everything is rigged, and only people who have a billion dollars and have access to and are best friends with people who are on boards of directors of major companies - they're the only ones who can make a true buck.

In some respects, inside information is a form of financial steroid. It is unfair: it is offensive; it is unlawful; and it puts a black mark on the entire enterprise.

Electronic communications networks match trades between investors directly, without using a market maker or specialist as an intermediary.

Wall Street wants to keep its schemes too complicated to understand so that the roulette wheel can keep turning.

I'll always understand the Schadenfreude aspect to short-selling. I get that no one will always like it. I'm also convinced to the deepest part of my bones that short-selling plays the role of real-time financial watchdog. It's one of the few checks and balances in the market.

Since this report has been read in the House, a spirit of havoc, speculation and ruin, has arisen by people who had access to the information… Three vessels Sir have sailed within a fortnight freighted for speculation; they are intended to purchase up the State and other securities in the hands of the uninformed but honest citizens of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. My soul rises indignant at the avaricious and immoral turpitude which so vile a conduct displays.

There is a growing distrust of the market and a feeling that Wall Street is a crooked casino where the house always wins. Yes, the game is rigged.

The idea that big buyside firms are going to come in and trade mano-a-mano with high-frequency trading firms shows a lack of knowledge of the business.

On Wall Street, every story becomes known so quickly. They are all so connected that everything disseminates there faster than anywhere.

Fancy computers are engaging in legalized front-running. The profits are clearly coming from the rest of us - our college endowments and our pensions. Why is this legal? What the hell is the government thinking? It's like letting rats into a restaurant.

But when that information travels only to a privileged few, when it is used to profit at the expense of the investing public, when that information comes by way of favored access rather than by acumen, insight or diligence, we must ask, 'Whose interest is really being served?'.

All of a sudden the market is all about algos and routers.

He that makes use of another's fancy or necessity to sell ribbons or cloth dearer to him than to another man at the same time, cheats him.

When the last history of high-frequency trading is written, Hunsader, like Joe Saluzzi and Sal Arnuk of Themis Trading, deserves a prominent place in it.