Electronic trading on stock exchanges has been around since the 1970s, with the JSE going down this road in 1996.The days when traders shouted buy and sell orders on a stock exchange floor, known as open outcry, are long gone. Today, computers and algorithms execute most of the world’s equity market trades.Technological advancements have not only automated trades, but have also brought exceptionally high speed to trading.Known as high-frequency trading (HFT), this is measured in microseconds — a millionth of a second, or quicker than the blink of an eye.HFT makes use of sophisticated technology to execute trades at the fastest speed possible; preferably faster than those of competitors.In the race for speed, proximity matters. In order to reduce latency — the distance that a signal needs to travel — these traders physically place their trading engines next to stock market servers via co-location services.The JSE opened co-location to clients in mid-2014. Today, about 30% of the valu...
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