spike in silver and gold prices!, page-12

I don't understand when people are upset about algorithmic trading when looking at it from a free-market persepctive. Having algo trading is much more inline with a free-market then enforcing non-use.

In a majority of situations Algo trading is another trading strategy that tries to pry order out of chaos. It is just as successful/unsuccessful as an individual trader. The advantage to use it for bigger trading houses is that it cuts down on the costs of hiring traders, so with the same margins of operation you can scrape a little more profit.

When you see small trades of 11, 14 and so on 99% of the time it is simply the algorithms used have returned that as the buy/sell amount based on a variety of instructions. On illiquid stocks it is quite noticeable. On more liquid stocks these amounts can be much more realistic on par with the majority of trades and are almost indistinguishable from manual trades.

There is nothing stopping the retail trader from using algorithmic trading. I personally wouldn't trust my hard earned to an automatic process on the basis that there might be that one-off occasion where something happens that blows your capital, such as the famous Flash-Crash on March 6 2010 on DJIA.

Algorithmic trading isn't a malicious tool used to steal other peoples money, at least any more then a trader trying to buy low and sell high. It isn't used to stop hunt any more then a manual trader could.

The only gripe I have with the process is special netowrk connections to the ASX, potentially faster and can slip orders in ahead of a manual orders. I don't know enough about that process to say if it truly is that much more advantageous. I've heard stories of people being out bid/ask'd by such a process, but they are only stories and quite probably exaggerated as most good stories do.