US Government Floats Rules for High-Speed Trading

Federal regulators took a step toward stricter oversight of the high-speed trading market, putting forward a broad range of possible rules for public comment.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission floated the potential restrictions less than a month after the Nasdaq exchange suffered a three-hour trading outage. The outage was the latest in a series of disruptions to stoke concerns about high-speed trading.

Among the ideas put forth by the CFTC: requiring exchanges to routinely test equipment at trading firms; developing training standards for individuals at firms who oversee the automated systems; and having exchanges set maximum sizes for trading orders.

The public has 90 days to comment on the ideas. After that, the agency would likely begin drafting a more formal proposal.