How fast is high-frequency trading?
Computers and clever maths enable stock market traders to buy and sell in the blink of an eye.
Algorithms - step-by-step mathematical procedures - generate automatic trades, conducted by computers, each one racing to be first.
But does high-frequency trading make things worse when things go wrong?
Tim Harford from Radio 4's More or Less demonstrates the speed at which it happens.
10 Aug 2012
- From the section UK