A delay of 350 microseconds may very well make the market less turbulent and reduce the prevalence of &quot;flash&quot; crashes. Though the method of implementing the delay might not succeed, a forced delay would alleviate the arms race to lower latency algorithms. Lower latency means fewer computations and less memory, which means the strategy space is smaller. With enough players crowded into a small strategy space, the market becomes more frothy as periodically too many players collide on the same strategy.<p>Placing a lower limit on latency allows a better balance between algorithmic complexity and latency. The strategy space will be larger and hopefully will be large enough that there&#x27;s room for most everyone to try different strategies, making the market calmer.<p>To get a sense for the mechanism of this phenomenon, check out the El Farol Bar Problem (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;El_Farol_Bar_problem" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;El_Farol_Bar_problem</a>).<p>Unfortunately, IEX&#x27;s proposed implementation of a delay is probably not as good as simply changing the precision of the exchange&#x27;s clocks. If the exchange decided it would measure time only to the nearest second and orders occurring at the same second would be processed in random order, I expect that would be a better solution. Adding some randomness to the processing order at the 100s of milliseconds scale would go a long way to reducing front-running and overly simplistic momentum strategies. The latter are the main cause of market turbulence.