I don't know, even the non-HFT side of computers in trading is interesting. I looked at http://raudys.com/kursas/2002%20Trading%20and%20exchanges.pd... the other day, which is a set of chapter-excerpts from "Trading and Exchanges". It was a great read in a "Here's how the sausage is made" kind of way. It offered a very pragmatic overview of how and why things are the way they are; it certainly enticed me into getting the full book.

I had the same thought. The article is more about the history of securities clearing.

I worked for a couple of years on clearing tech and have worked in trading tech. The two sides are didn't share much in the way of systems but clearing tech came first and enabled e.g. direct exchange data feeds. Clearing is the quintessential PG "schlep" problem, relatively easy math, an administrative hassle to set up accounts and connectivity. Dominated by a few big players and "enterprise" software vendors that no one is really happy with.

Some of the systems from the 1970's are still in production. Our technology counterpart from one of the main US CCP's [1] (and a really nice guy) told us he was running a mainframe emulator on his Windows box to service requests in 2010. Wish I could remember what the mainframe was.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Counterparty_Clearing

Edit: fixed mispaste, link, clarified

Well automation of the trade processing element is what has allowed for algorithmic trading to be possible at anything above a glacial frequency.

But I'm not sure what your question is in response to. Was there a suggestion of a link? I didn't see algorithmic trading mentioned, simply a description of the automation of trade processing that has occurred over the years (vs automation of the trade decision making process).

I don't even think today's issue was Algol or high frequency related. And electronic exchanges (more than record processing) are what's made HF and many formd of Algol trading possible.

Another misleading title - cheap seo tricks.

exactly. I was hoping for more content, but it ended without connecting between algo trading and computerized record