program trading

Definitions

High-volume and high-speed buying and selling of investment securities, such as stocks and bonds, which is initiated and executed by brokerage firms' computer programs that continually monitor market conditions.

uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“But the controversy over program⟳ trading, the sophisticated investment strategy responsible for the upheavals that have⟳ sometimes marked “witching” Fridays, is far from over.”

“When program⟳ trading came into vogue in the mid-1980s, it was at the forefront of Wall Street's computer revolution—and its practitioners included the Street's largest and most luminous brokerages.”

“A more bewildering development is the array of complex, computer-assisted trading techniques that, in taking the stock⟳ exchanges by storm, have⟳ become⟳ a major cause of the market's extraordinary peaks and valleys. The most controversial is known as program⟳ trading, in which computers, for example, launch⟳ massive buy⟳ and sell⟳ orders.”

“I’ll say⟳ it again: program⟳ trading, now known as “high-frequency” trading, serves no purpose but to line the pockets of the program-trading firms at the expense of the millions of other investors participating in the market.”

CEFR level