In promotional interviews for his latest book, Flash Boys, Michael Lewis has said that equity markets are rigged in favour of high-frequency traders who use speed to cheat big institutional investors.
Asia has largely avoided the problems associated with these high-speed strategies because most markets have just one exchange.
A study in 2011 suggested that HFTs contributed 70% of trading volume in the US, compared to just 10% in Asia mostly in India, Japan and Australia, but it is a growing phenomenon that regulators in the region are playing attention to.
Lewis’s book is certain to gain a wide audience....