It was a late Friday afternoon, after 19-weeks of utter catastrophe in the stock and commodity markets, as the SEC and Justice department’s new rule against high frequency trading had gone into full effect. The authorities thought that the stair-step approach to quelling this technique would suffice, but it hadn’t, and now with all high frequency trades stopped which had ultimately accounted for nearly 65% of the commodity market, 75% of the carbon trading market, and 58% of the stock market trades, the volume was so far down, nothing was happening – 10 trillion dollars had left the stock market alone since the rule was announced.
