Sarah N. Lynch at Reuters reports:
Former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission staffers who now work in the private sector may have helped derail last year’s effort to reform the $2.6 trillion money market fund industry, a report [by the Project on Government Oversight] said.
Read more at Revolving door may have hurt SEC money fund reforms: report | Reuters.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro said Wednesday she is worried about the role of high-frequency traders in the stock market and hinted at new policies aimed at curbing frenetic market activity.
A large portion of trading in the equities market has little to do with “the fundamentals of the company that’s being traded” and more to do with “the minuscule aberrational price move” that computer-assisted traders with direct connections to the exchange can “jump on” in fractions of a second, Ms. Schapiro said.
Such activity “worries me,” she said in a wide-ranging breakfast meeting with reporters. One solution would be forcing high-frequency traders to pay for the canceled trades that make up more than nine-tenths of their orders, she said. Another possible remedy: requiring such traders to maintain competitive buy and sell orders in the market throughout most of the trading day.
via Schapiro Questions Role of High-Frequency Traders – WSJ.com.
