Is Computerized Trading Meant for Everybody?

June 1988
NEWSDAY

Pros face prospect of faceless stock markets, which some see as fairer to all participants.

"Everyone who trades in an S&P 500 stock who is not a front-runner is a victim," says Robert Kanter, Managing Director of ARBCO, a limited partnership in New York. "There is always someone making a decision out there that affects that stock who knows more than you know."

Kanter, who's a short-term trader, says he gets hurt in two ways by the current system. First, he pays commissions that he says would not be necessary if buyers and sellers were allowed to trade directly without having to find each other through a third party, and second, he doesn't always get the best price the market has to offer.

"The existing system has no facility to share material market information between all market participants," says Kanter. "It is the privy asset of a certain group of participants."

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