1) Chilton, Bart. “No Need to Demonize High-Frequency Trading.” DealBook No Need to Demonize HighFrequency Trading Comments. New York Times, 7 July 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

In his article, Chilton argues that high-frequency trading has been beneficial to the markets, as opposed to some of the commonly seen articles. Words such as “predatory” and “toxic” have been used to describe the practice. Many have been so focused on the negatives that they never stopped to look at the positive effects. Some of the positive effects include increased liquidity, smaller bid-ask spreads, and a decrease in volatility.

2) Lewis, Michael. “The Wolf Hunters of Wall Street.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 31 Mar. 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

Brad Katsuyama worked at RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) during the time of the crash. RBC wasn’t even on Wall Street’s map at the time. They were certainly a big player, but not in the CDO business. At RBC, Katsuyama, a trader, saw that when he entered his orders, they would not always go through. It happened repeatedly. At first, he thought it was just RBC’s systems. But, after talking to many of his trader friends from different firm, he found that they were having the same problem too. After a lot of research, he found that there were people running ahead of his orders. They were executing their orders faster than he can.

3)Patterson, Scott. “High-Frequency Trader Charged With Market Manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 2 Oct. 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

The first high-frequency trader has been charged under the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act. The Act has been trying to crack down on illegitimate trading practices after the market crash of 2008. Michael Coscia was charged for “spoofing”. Spoofing is the practice of creating trading algorithms that would initiate a trade, and the trade a fraction of a second later, to move the market in his favor. He was charged on six counts of spoofing, each with a consequence of up to 25 years in prison a $250,000 fine.

4) Rotbult, Charles. “How Does High-Frequency Trading Affect Individual Investors?” The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 19 Aug. 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

Many individual investors tend to think that high-frequency trading has a profound impact on them. In fact, for most, investors, high frequency trading is irrelevant to them. They should not view HFT as a problem, but rather as a solution. HFT has significantly improved market making, thus creating more liquidity. To much surprise, HFT has, in some ways, increased the profitability of investors. It has decreased the spread between the bid-ask spread, allowing the individual investor to buy and sell at a much closer price.