Late Friday afternoon, news broke that?attorney Michael Lewis (nope, not the author) had filed a class-action lawsuit against 13 stock exchanges over HFT, reported CNBC.
The case had been filed in the U.S. District for the Southern District of New York. It was filed on behalf of Harold Lanier and it is against?13 stock exchanges and subsidiaries ?both “individually, and on behalf of all others similarly situated.” Eight law firms signed the 40-page case and language included, “This is a case about broken promises” reported The Guardian on Friday afternoon.?
Lewis has said in an interview that the exchanges’ information “was not timely or accurate, and wasn’t fairly distributed.” The suit alleges they were in breach of contract.
The attorney added, “The illusory market ? the market that the investor sees when he looks at his monitor ? is anywhere from 1,500 to 900 milliseconds old. That doesn’t sound like much, because the blink of an eye is 300 milliseconds. But that’s a long, long time in the world of HFT.”
Additional charges included that the exchanges had discriminated against some investors through selling “advance access” to market data via private feeds and co-location services.
According to CNBC the following exchanges would not comment: New York Stock Exchange, BATS Exchange, Nasdaq OMX and Chicago Board Options Exchange.?