Fee threat for US high frequency firms

Wall Street politician advocates new fee programme for firms that cancel trades to cover cost of a market-wide surveillance system

Wall Street politician Senator Charles Schumer has told regulators that sophisticated electronic traders should bear the cost of monitoring their dealings, with special fees assessed to firms that issue and then rapidly cancel securities orders.

The New York Democrat said that such charges could defray the expense of building a new system to track in real time the orders that high-frequency traders pump into US markets, a year after the "Flash Crash" sent stocks into a 20-minute tailspin.

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