Abstract
Financial markets are now ecologies of trading algorithms. In this chapter, we propose market effectiveness as the ethical goal of automated markets and review the professional, organizational, and industry-wide ethics in this domain. We present criteria for what counts as both a prudent and ethical automated trading system. We argue that an ecology of such systems unfettered by excessive regulation will evolve to promote the effectiveness goal. Largely, this is already occurring. Then, we look to the future, investigating new issues that are arising around the use of artificial intelligence and alternative data sources and possible courses of action. However markets evolve, as long as their effectiveness as we define it increases, the outcome ought to benefit society.
References
Allen C, Wallach W, Smit I (2006) Why machine ethics? IEEE Intell Syst 21:12–17
Anderson M, Anderson SL (2007) Machine ethics: creating an ethical intelligent agent. AI Mag 28:15
Angel JJ, McCabe D (2013) Fairness in financial markets: the case of high frequency trading. J Bus Ethics 112:585–595
Ashby WR (1991) Requisite variety and its implications for the control of complex systems. In: Facets of systems science. Springer, Boston, pp 405–417
Blocher J, Cooper R, Seddon J, Van Vliet B (2016) Phantom liquidity and high-frequency quoting. J Trading 11(3):6–15
Bloomfield R, O’Hara M (1999) Market transparency: who wins and who loses? Rev Financ Stud 12(1):5–35
Brogaard J (2010) High frequency trading and its impact on market quality. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Working Paper, 66
Cheng E (2017) Just 10% of trading is regular stock picking, JPMorgan estimates. CNBC, June 13, 2017. Available via www.cnbc.com/2017/06/13/deathofthehumaninvestorjust10percentoftradingisregularstockpickingjpmorganestimates.html. Accessed 12 June 2018
Chordia T, Roll R, Subrahmanyam A (2002) Order imbalance, liquidity, and market returns. J Financ Econ 65(1):111–130
Chordia T, Roll R, Subrahmanyam A (2005) Evidence on the speed of convergence to market efficiency. J Financ Econ 76:271–292
Cooper R, Ong M, Van Vliet B (2015) Multi-scale capability: a better approach to performance measurement for algorithmic trading. Algorithmic Financ 4(1–2):53–68
Cooper R, Davis M, Van Vliet B (2016) The mysterious ethics of high-frequency trading. Bus Ethics Q 26(1):1–22
Dalko V, Wang M (2018) High-frequency trading: deception and consequences. J Mod Account Audit 14(5):271–280
Davis M (2002) Profession, code, and ethics. Ashgate, Aldershot
Davis M, Kumiega A, Van Vliet B (2013) Ethics, finance, and automation: a preliminary survey of problems in high frequency trading. Sci Eng Ethics 19(3):851–874
Fama EF (1970) Efficient capital markets: a review of theory and empirical work. J Financ 25(2):383–417
Farmer JD, Lo AW (1999) Frontiers of finance: evolution and efficient markets. Proc Natl Acad Sci 96(18):9991–9992
Farmer JD, Skouras S (2013) An ecological perspective on the future of computer trading. Quant Financ 13(3):325–346
Hasbrouck J, Saar G (2009) Technology and liquidity provision: the blurring of traditional definitions. J Financ Mark 12:143–172
Hendershott T, Riordan R (2013) Algorithmic trading and the market for liquidity. J Financ Quant Anal 48:1001–1024
Hendershott T, Jones CM, Menkveld A (2011) Does algorithmic trading improve liquidity? J Financ 66:1–33
Hurlburt GF, Miller KW, Voas JM (2009) An ethical analysis of automation, risk, and the financial crises of 2008. IEEE IT Prof 11(10):14–19
Kumiega A, Neururer T, Van Vliet B (2014) Trading system capability. Quant Financ 14:383–392
Kumiega A, Sterijevski G, Van Vliet B (2016) Beyond the flash crash: systemic risk, reliability, and high frequency financial markets. J Trading 11:71–83
Li K, Cooper R, Van Vliet B (2018) How does high-frequency trading affect low-frequency trading? J Behav Financ 19(2):235–248
Lo AW (2004) The adaptive markets hypothesis: market efficiency from an evolutionary perspective. J Portf Manag 30:15–29
Longstreth B (1986) Modern investment management and the prudent man rule. Oxford University Press, New York
MacKenzie D (2016) How algorithms interact: Goffman’s ‘interaction order’ in automated trading. Working paper. Available at: http://www.sociology.ed.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/199863/IntOrder27.pdf. Accessed 7 Mar 2019
Markham JW (1989) Prohibited floor trading activities under the commodity exchange act. Fordham Law Rev 58(1):1–52
Moffitt SD (2017) The strategic analysis of financial markets, volume 2: trading system analytics. World Scientific, Singapore
Moor JH (2006) The nature, importance, and difficulty of machine ethics. Int Underw Syst Des 21:18–21
Ramaswamy S, Joshi H (2009) Automation and ethics. In: Nof SY (ed) Springer handbook of automation. Springer, New York
Roll R (1984) A simple implicit measure of the effective bid-ask spread in an efficient market. J Financ 39:1127–1139
Sims R (1992) The challenge of ethical behavior in organizations. J Bus Ethics 11(7):505–513
Stoll HR (2006) Electronic trading in stock markets. J Econ Perspect 20(1):153–174
U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) v. Donald R. Wilson and DRW Investments LLC. No. 13 Civ. 7884 (RJS). U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (2018)
Vincent J (2019) Facebook and CMU’s ‘superhuman’ poker AI beats human pros. The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/11/20690078/ai-poker-pluribus-facebook-cmu-texas-hold-em-six-player-no-limit. Accessed 5 Sept 2019
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Cooper, R., Davis, M., Kumiega, A., Van Vliet, B. (2020). Ethics for Automated Financial Markets. In: San-Jose, L., Retolaza, J., van Liedekerke, L. (eds) Handbook on Ethics in Finance. International Handbooks in Business Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00001-1_18-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00001-1_18-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00001-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-00001-1
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities