NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND INFRASTRUCTURES OF FINANCIAL SERVICES

This paper presents a view over recent developments in the underlying infrastructure of the financial system, more specifically electronic trading and how computers have taken over classic trading mechanisms. While some of the benefits are easy to agree upon, evidence shows that technical discrepancies have made the order book unequal fighting ground for traders. The findings of the paper suggests that in practice, high frequency trading is actually detrimental to order book health and degrades liquidity and overall quality of execution of regular trades.