There is one thing Jos Schmitt wants to make clear: Not all high-frequency trading is bad. During an interview in his Toronto office, Schmitt drops this caveat nearly every time he lambastes certain HFT practices. “There are strategies that HFTs can deploy that are predatory in nature,” he says. “That is the big issue, and that is what we have to remove from the market.”
Schmitt is the co-founder and CEO of Aequitas Innovations, which has the backing of some of the country’s biggest financial institutions, including the Royal Bank of Canada, CI Financial and OMERS. This month Aequitas is launching a new trading platform for Canadian stocks, called Neo, to thwart HFT operators, which use algorithms to exploit split-second price differences.
It’s a concept another Canadian, Brad Katsuyama, has already championed on Wall Street, and one embraced by an emerging faction of securities markets participants beleaguered by the ongoing arms race for ever-faster trading technology.
Canadian Business – Joe Castaldo – March 26, 2015.
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