High-Speed Trading Comes to Japan

摘要

Yuji Honkawa knew humans were losing by April 2010, when, no matter how fast he sent orders to be filled at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, a machine beat him. Since then he's watched as the market sped up further and automated traders went from generating 10 percent of orders at the start of 2010 to as much as 72 percent last year. Unemployed now after 20 years dealing equities at seven different brokerages, Honkawa estimates that among the men and women he battled to get prices for clients, 80 percent have left the industry. "It's kind of like The Terminator," he says. "The story is about humans and machines battling it out, and in the end the machines exterminate all the humans."