Ultra-Fast Computers Corner Stock Market

When the companies fail, they fire their employees, the vast majority of whom did nothing to deserve losing their job. The employees also have no say in who leads their company, the stock holders make that decision. I'm fine with personal accountability for executives if they take personal accountability for their employees.

I've traded stocks and used robot trading in the past. In my experience, I do believe that a high frequency of algorithmic trading is an incredibly bad idea. The problem is that these programs, regardless of their complexity, do not make very many "mistakes" so to say. When the program recognizes a certain stock pattern, it buys/sells or implements a specific strategy based on that pattern. It's kind of like having someone sitting in a room drawing charts all day. The problem is that when something like this is automated and especially if it's bringing in money, more and more institutions use it. You start to get kind of a ripple effect.. one algorithm buys at a certain time and another sells at a certain time, it creates an automated market. The problem with this is that it makes it difficult to do proper valuation of a company (a stock can be stable even if the company is failing) and there's a great deal of imbalance in the system. If enough large investors blacklist a stock on their programs it can start a chain reaction from the downward price of the stock.. in essence..all the other robots enact their own strategies for falling price and destroy the stock. It's a pretty dangerous thing to play with..

Honestly, there's nothing wrong with this: Capitalists run around and find the fastest way to make money; Everyone piles on; the market goes way up until there's an overcapacity; the market goes way down until it's overcompensated; Rinse; Repeat. Not every country lives this way but enough of we Americans seem to like it....?