What’s the difference between, say, 30.79 milliseconds and 29.29 milliseconds, where one millisecond is one-thousandth of the smallest unit of time on your wristwatch? One-and-a-half milliseconds and a few million dollars or more, made or lost, Walter Mattli would have you know in his book Darkness By Design: The Hidden Power In Global Capital Markets as he takes you on a trip into the sinister world of stock market deals based on algorithmic trading.
Mr Mattli, a professor of international political economy and a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, paints a gloomy picture of the state of affairs in securities