Financial Trading at the Speed of Light Technology has allowed the pace of financial trading to approach its theoretical limits
By DAVID SCHNEIDER / OCTOBER 2011
Once upon a time, stock exchanges were packed with traders running, shouting, and elbowing one another on an open trading floor. Today, virtually all stock trading is done, well, virtually—through massive, globally interlinked computer systems. The rates of these transactions are now limited only by technology and, increasingly, by the speed of light. So a costly arms race has begun for telecommunications and network links that can give traders a competitive edge as small as a few tens of microseconds.
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