Europe Begins Push To Ban HFT: Calls "Quote Stuffing" Market Abuse, Dark Pools "Tragic Error", And "Explicitly Rules Out" Flash Orders

French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said a form of computerized trading known as high-frequency trading (HFT) may need banning in some cases." Lagarde, who has recently shown a willingness to be seen as not part of the Bernanke mold, told reporters that her "natural tendency would be at least to regulate, to oversee it very strictly and after a cost-benefit analysis of these methods, maybe to forbid it." Elsewhere, a European Parliament November 16 report on MiFID "Calls for the practice of ‘layering’ or ‘quote stuffing’ to be explicitly defined as market abuse."

Fraud and market manipulation that garners little more than a yawn here is starting to do a little more than raise eyebrows overseas.