HFT: NY Attorney General Launches Investigation Into Unfair Advantages

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Tuesday a broad investigation into whether US exchanges and alternative venues such as dark pools provided high frequency trading firms unfair advantages.  Not coincidentally the move comes nearly one week after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission launched an investigation into Virtu, the high frequency trading (HFT) firm that publically boasts a nearly 99.9999% win percentage on its trades and is planning an initial public offering. The two moves against the practice of HFT carry important similarities and seem to strike at the core of the practice that some are now calling to be…