program trading

High-volume and high-speed buying and selling of investment securities, such as stocks and bonds, which is initiated and executed by brokerage firms' computer programs that continually monitor market conditions.

Noun

  1. High-volume and high-speed buying and selling of investment securities, such as stocks and bonds, which is initiated and executed by brokerage firms' computer programs that continually monitor market conditions.
    • But the controversy over program trading, the sophisticated investment strategy responsible for the upheavals that have sometimes marked “witching” Fridays, is far from over. - 1986 September 21, James Sterngold, “Wall...
    • When program trading came into vogue in the mid-1980s, it was at the forefront of Wall Street's computer revolution—and its practitioners included the Street's largest and most luminous brokerages. - 1992 May 17,...
    • A more bewildering development is the array of complex, computer-assisted trading techniques that, in taking the stock exchanges by storm, have become a major cause of the market's extraordinary peaks and valleys. The...

    Synonyms: high-frequency trading

Forms

programme trading