The fully automated stock exchange has been a vision of traders and economists since the seventies. Before the High Frequency Trading algorithms joined in the markets, it was human beings judging the (future) value of stocks and companies. Now that the algorithms are joining the trading-game, computer agents are also contributing to this assessment of value. Are the HFT robots a sublime piece of engineering, a super-human power that can be used to our advantage or an economist's fantasy leading to more dangers and market crashes?

Albert Menkveld is Professor of Finance at VU University Amsterdam and Fellow at the Tinbergen Institute. In 2002, he received a Tinbergen PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam. He was on visiting positions at various U.S. schools: Wharton in 2000, Stanford in 2001, and NYU in 2004-2005 and in 2008-2011. Albert's research agenda is focused on securities trading, liquidity, asset pricing, and financial econometrics. In 2010 he received a five-year VIDI grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), in 2007 the Pierson medal ('Dutch Bates Clark') from the Royal Dutch Economic Association, in 2003 a Lamfalussy scholarship from the European Central Bank, and in 2001 the Josseph de la Vega Prize from the Federation of European Exchanges.

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