Anthony Hilton: It's time to investigate how fair fast markets are

A few years ago the big fund management groups accounted for the bulk of the trading on stock exchanges. Then, on the back of ever-faster computers and communications, the high-frequency traders arrived.

Buying and selling shares in millionths of a second, they seek to take advantage of the most minute price differentials long before conventional traders even know they exist.

It may not be what stock exchanges were designed for, but it is what they have become.

This week Anne Richards, chief investment officer of Aberdeen Asset Management publicly questioned whether this development was in the client’s interest and whether the system was even fair.

She pointed out that conventional traders have good days and bad days but some of the high-frequency houses in the United States never seem to lose money.