B
Black Swan
Lord Myners: "I have been increasingly troubled that we seem to find ourselves in a situation in which shares are to be bought and sold rather than being part of an ownership relationship between investor and a company," he said.
"The danger is that nobody really seems to think of themselves as owners."
Companies could become the "playthings" of speculators because of super-fast automatic share trading, Treasury minister Lord Myners has warned.
The peer, a former fund manager, told the BBC this was one of the main dangers of such a system.
High-frequency trading (HFT) is automated dealing where shares change hands, frequently in microseconds.
Lord Myners said the process risked destroying the relationship between an investor and a company.
HFT is based on computer programmes which, in effect, remove the human element from share transactions by searching for trends in the market and trading automatically in a fraction of a second.
It is estimated that HFT has risen sharply in the USA and now accounts for up to 70% of all share trades and is rising rapidly in the UK and Europe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8338045.stm
"The danger is that nobody really seems to think of themselves as owners."
Companies could become the "playthings" of speculators because of super-fast automatic share trading, Treasury minister Lord Myners has warned.
The peer, a former fund manager, told the BBC this was one of the main dangers of such a system.
High-frequency trading (HFT) is automated dealing where shares change hands, frequently in microseconds.
Lord Myners said the process risked destroying the relationship between an investor and a company.
HFT is based on computer programmes which, in effect, remove the human element from share transactions by searching for trends in the market and trading automatically in a fraction of a second.
It is estimated that HFT has risen sharply in the USA and now accounts for up to 70% of all share trades and is rising rapidly in the UK and Europe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8338045.stm