Courtesy of NY Times
Wall Street firms and exchanges have long said that the speed and competition in the markets has made trading cheaper for everyone. Mary Jo White, the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, recently referred to the United States stock market as the “envy of the world.”
But the top trader at the Norwegian fund, Oyvind G. Schanke, said not enough was heard from long-term investors like the fund, which holds $110 billion in United States’ stocks, and the asset managers representing American retirement savers. For them, Mr. Schanke said, the benefits of the technological changes of the last few years are not nearly as clear, and the costs of the system are often left out of the discussion.
“The U.S. market has gone through a lot of changes and has become quite complicated — and this complexity of the market creates a lot of challenges for a large investor like us,” said Mr. Schanke, the global head of stock trading for the fund, Norges Bank Investment Management. The fund invests some of the country’s oil wealth for future public programs.
Compared with five years ago, he said, “We don’t see any evidence that it is cheaper for us to trade.”
Mr. Schanke said the debate had gone off track largely because most of the research had examined narrow metrics to determine whether things were improving.
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