The march of the robo-traders

摘要

Imagine the software equivalent of a golden goose: a program that continually produces money as its output. It sounds fanciful, but such software exists. Indeed, if you have a pension or endowment policy, or have money invested in share-based funds, the chances are that such a program—variously known as an "autonomous trading agent", "algorithmic trading" system or simply as a "robo-trader"-has already been used to help your investments grow. Simple software-based traders have been around for many years, but they are now becoming far more sophisticated, and make trades worth tens of billions of dollars, euros and pounds every day. They are proving so successful that in the equity markets, where they are used to buy and sell shares, they already appear to be outperforming their human counterparts, and it now seems likely that their success will be repeated in foreign-exchange markets too. Proponents of robo-traders claim that, as well as making more money, they can also help to make markets more stable. And, of course, being made of software, they do not demand lunch breaks, holidays or bonuses.