Trading at the Speed of Light

Donald MacKenzie is professor of sociology at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance and An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets.

In today's financial markets, trading floors on which brokers buy and sell shares face-to-face have increasingly been replaced by lightning-fast electronic systems that use algorithms to execute astounding volumes of transactions.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.