Fast Market

Okay, things get crazy here. Whoa. Stocks and bonds and derivatives trading alllll over the place. And every now and then there’s a leap...(yes, see: LEAP). And, blimey. That’s how things work here on the London Stock Exchange.

The fast market rule accommodates the chaos by giving brokers and other market makers the freedom to trade outside the ranges published to the exchange.

Why is this set of rails and restrictions needed? Because we live in a world of robots, artificial intelligence, fat thumbs that hit the wrong keys, and hackers from Russia, China, and Mars, all of whom can profit from disruption.

If you want to see this phenomenon in its finest form, check out Jack Nicholson in the original Batman. So the logic revolves around the fact that, today, even with all our massive computing power, we would still rather rely on human beings when the Congressman hits the fan...than assume that a computer will be clever enough to figure out what’s wrong when the world is on a collision course with chaos.