Last week, I watched a great technology-related segment on The Daily Show.  The subject was flash trading - the algorithm-based automated trading of securities executed by high-performance computers on high-performance networks at certain exchanges - done at an extremely fast pace.

It’s not something those involved want to make too much noise about, but countless such trades are being fired off by machines continually throughout the trading day - and it’s on the rise.  Often, these are trades you or I might be interested in making - but flash trades execute just a few crucial milliseconds before ours would, often adversely affecting the prices we get in (or out) at.  Reported by a cow suit-wearing Samantha Bee (’cash cow’, get it?), last week’s segment on flash trading was The Daily Show at it’s finest: intelligent coverage of an otherwise under-reported issue, all wrapped in a layer of funny.

It got me thinking about technology …and gaming the system.

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