Up-Front Questions on Trading

February 1988
Chicago Tribune

One veteran trader who thinks front-running is a problem is Robert Kanter, an off-the-floor New York trader who takes arbitrage positions between the stock and futures markets and makes his money from the gaps between them. He also was the founder and past President of the Chicago Board Options Exchange's Market Makers' Association and knows a great deal about the futures and options markets.

Kanter says current front-running rules are "not very strict. They infer knowing specifically the turns of orders, which may or may not be applicable when dealing in futures."

Kanter says the rules should be tightened and laws should be imposed that prohibit firms from doing business for customers in the same room in which they do business for themselves. Without new laws, he said, the ordinary consumer will lose faith in the system, and "the money will siphon to the ones who have the privy information from those who don't."

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