Geographies of High Frequency Trading: Algorithmic Capitalism and its Contradictory Elements

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Abstract

This paper investigates the geographies of high frequency trading. Today shares shift hands within micro seconds, giving rise to a form of financial geographies termed algorithmic capitalism. This notion refers to the different spatio-temporalities produced by high frequency trading, under the valuation of time. As high frequency trading accelerates financial markets, the paper examines the spatio-temporalities of automated trading by the ways in which the speed of knowledge exploitation in financial markets is not only of interest, but also the expansion between different temporalities. The paper demonstrates how the intensification of time-space compression produces radical new dynamics in the financial market and develops information rent in HFT as convertible to a time rent and a spatio-temporal rent. The final section discusses whether high frequency trading only responds to crises in micro seconds or constitutes them. It argues that automated trading will not only contribute to accelerate crises, but also deepen them by the ways in which it differentiates the dynamics between financial, fixed and productive capital.
Translated title of the contributionGeographies of High Frequency Trading Bidragets undertitel på originalsprog Algorithmic Capitalism and its Contradictory Elements: Algorithmic Capitalism and its Contradictory Elements
Original languageEnglish
JournalGeoforum
Volume68
Pages (from-to)25-28
Number of pages4
ISSN0016-7185
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Jan 2016

Keywords

  • crises
  • geographies of finance
  • high frequency trading
  • microseconds
  • neoliberalism
  • space-time compression
  • time-rent

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