About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Opinion: New Wall Street Film Shows That Technology Never Sleeps

Subscribe to our newsletter

By Dr Giles Nelson, Deputy CTO, Progress Software

The latest Wall Street movie – ‘Money Never Sleeps’ – opens with Gordon Gekko, the man who so famously stated “Greed is good” in the first film, being released from jail. It’s a comical scene, contrasting the technology of the ’80s to the tech of today as the guard returns Gekko’s bulky mobile phone.

But it’s not just the then-brick-sized mobile phones that have changed since the 1987 instalment. Gekko is released into a world where the nature of how the financial world is run has completely changed. It’s only after recently revisiting the original movie, however, that I came to realise just how much advances in technology have fundamentally changed the way in which the trading floor environment operates.

Take High frequency trading (HFT), the use of technology to monitor and submit orders to markets extremely quickly, which has been receiving a lot of bad press recently and is sometimes described as “abusive”. It is no more abusive than two traders making trades using only the telephone, as was the case in a scene from the original Wall Street film. Yes, it can be used for rogue trading by the likes of Gekko, but so can any other technology.

Similarly, algorithmic trading is also seen by some as an industry curse. Credit Suisse has been fined this year by an exchange after its algorithmic trading system went out of control and bombarded the exchange with hundreds of thousands of erroneous orders. But this wasn’t a deliberate attempt to manipulate the market. It was a mistake, albeit a careless one. There just weren’t proper controls in place to protect the market from what, ultimately, was human error – the algorithms hadn’t been tested sufficiently.

There is no doubting that technology has generated enormous benefits for trading – greater efficiencies, more market liquidity, tighter spreads and better prices for all. To lose these benefits because of perception would be very dangerous. Having said this, technology has also made the markets faster and more complex. Therefore, all market participants need to up their game by deploying modern monitoring capabilities to spot trading anomalies to help capture the next-generation Gekkos.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: High-Performance Networks & Low-Latency Connectivity for Trading

With financial markets becoming more complex and interconnected in today’s electronic trading environment, trading firms, exchanges, and infrastructure providers need to continually push the boundaries of network performance to stay ahead. Ultra-low latency, seamless connectivity, and resilient infrastructure are no longer just advantages – to stay competitive, they’re necessities. This webinar, part of the A-Team...

BLOG

Horizon Launches New Smart Order Router to Enhance Execution and Liquidity Access

Horizon Trading Solutions has announced the launch of Horizon Compass, a next-generation Smart Order Router (SOR) designed to help institutional and retail brokers manage execution quality and market complexity more effectively. Targeting both large and regional brokers, the new SOR is engineered to meet evolving market demands, including the increasing fragmentation of liquidity and sustained...

EVENT

RegTech Summit New York

Now in its 9th year, the RegTech Summit in New York will bring together the RegTech ecosystem to explore how the North American capital markets financial industry can leverage technology to drive innovation, cut costs and support regulatory change.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...