Could it be that cutting spreads of middlemen market-makers wasn’t a great way of advancing investors’ interests? “Maybe the government shouldn’t mess with markets unless it really understands how they function and the costs of regulation. Which it usually doesn’t.” [Larry Ribstein, Truth on the Market]
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What annoys me is all the talk of investors’ being harmed. I am an investor and the thought of shares being down seventy percent makes me slaver like a shopper at Walmart who has just heard them announce a 50 percent off sale. As an investor, when the prices are down dramatically, I buy, when they are way above what they should be, I sell.
The people who got hurt during the Flash Crash were not investors, they were traders, whining because their stop loss orders, instructions to sell at market should stocks decline below a certain level, worked. An investor doesn’t do stop loss orders. An investor is in for the long haul.
Admittedly, incidents like the flash crash are exceedingly rare, but anyone who has read Frederick Lewis Allen’s ONLY YESTERDAY can spot another instance of the same phenomenon in his recitation of facts around Black Thursday and the White Corporation. However, though rare, the phenomenon does happen and any intelligent trader should be aware of the possibility. Assuming that’s not an oxymoron.
In short, my sympathies lay not with the trader who watched his orders being carried out and his shares in Accenture being sold for ten cents each. My sympathies are with the guy who bought those shares for ten cents, sold them for a quick profit at $20, thinking he would pocket a few bucks — and woke up to find out that his sale went through, but his purchase was cancelled, and he was now short Accenture with the price at $35 a share.