Manoj Narang, the founder of Tradeworx, said that the competition had become "a tax" on computerized trading firms like his.
Yet in the early 1990s, before the onset of computerized trading, firms like Stratton were that era's bandits, making millions by fleecing small investors and perpetrating some of that time's most brazen frauds.
The report released Monday night is the product of the most comprehensive effort to date to understand the computerized trading firms that have come to dominate the financial markets and generate anxiety among regulators and investors.
Cicero Vieira, the BM&F Bovespa's chief operating officer, said a single trading environment meant computerized trading firms had fewer opportunities for arbitrage — simultaneously selling high in one place and buying low in another — which should keep high-frequency trading from growing past 20 percent or so of total volume.
The plaintiffs in the CME lawsuit argue that the rule change they are fighting is part of a broader effort to cater to electronic trading and especially to high-frequency traders -- computerized trading firms that buy and sell stocks, bonds and derivatives by the millisecond or faster using computer algorithms.
Mr. Saluzzi acknowledges that computerized trading has hurt firms like Themis, which executes trades on behalf of clients.
The link became firmer after computerized tomography scans of alcoholic people revealed shrinkage in the hippocampus, a brain center that tags information for storage as memories.
HIGH-SPEED FIRM SHUTTERS | Computerized traders are beginning to look less mighty.
DealBook » High-Frequency Trader Names New Head | Getco, a Chicago-based firm that uses computerized trades to profit on the difference between bids and offers for various products, is set to install Daniel Coleman as its new chief executive, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Analysts also pointed to high-frequency trading firms, which employ computerized, lightning-fast buying and selling, as contributing to the surging volumes.
