(Bloomberg) — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissionplans to unveil a public website next week that will allow it to publish data, research and analysis using the type of robust market data exploited by high-frequency trading firms.
The site will share some of the agency’s research into topics such as strategies that cancel a high-percentage of orders, which can give the appearance of false liquidity, SEC Chairman Mary Jo White said yesterday at a speech in Washington. It also will allow users to explore trading-activity patterns in “easy-to-read charts and graphs,” she said, according to prepared remarks for the Security Traders Association’s market structure conference.
The SEC’s effort is meant to inject data-driven analysis into complaints that technology has given some sophisticated traders an unfair advantage. The regulator has worked to improve its understanding of market behavior after taking more than four months to explain the May 2010 flash crash, when about $862 billion in U.S. equity value was wiped out in minutes before share prices recovered.
The SEC’s data-mining effort was boosted by its acquisition of Midas, an acronym for Market Information Data Analytics System. The agency acquired Midas last year from high-frequency trading firm and technology vendor Tradeworx Inc.
White said in April that the SEC needed to bring a “sense of urgency” to answering whether high-frequency trading, dark pools and the proliferation of complex order types harm retail investors or create an uneven playing field.
