Matt Levine, Columnist

Wall Street Is Sharpening Our Nanoseconds

If people want to trade stocks every hundredth of a nanosecond, why not let them?

July 2, 2018 at 7:00 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

There is no such thing as “the same time.”
Photographer: SSPL

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This post originally appeared in Money Stuff.

Let’s say you and I both want to buy 100 shares of Microsoft Corp. stock. Let’s say that 100 shares are currently listed for sale on the exchange at $100. There are more shares listed for sale at $100.01, $100.02, etc., but the first 100 shares are all that are available at $100.00. We both think the stock will go up, so whoever doesn’t get the 100 shares listed at $100 will have to spend more—at least $100.01—to buy them. Which one of us should get the shares?