Exchanges implement intentional trade delays to limit the harmful impact of low-latency trading. Do such “speed bumps” curb investment in fast trading technology? Data are scarce since trading technologies are proprietary. We build an experimental trading platform where participants face speed bumps and can invest in fast trading technology. We find that asymmetric speed bumps, on average, reduce investment in speed by only 20%. Increasing the magnitude of the speed bump by one standard deviation further reduces low-latency investment by 8.33%. Finally, introducing a symmetric speed bump leads to the same investment level as no speed bump at all.

交易所实施有意的交易延迟，以限制低延迟交易的有害影响。这种“减速带”是否会抑制对快速交易技术的投资？数据稀缺，因为交易技术是专有的。我们建立了一个实验性交易平台，参与者可以在这里遇到减速带，并可以投资于快速交易技术。我们发现，不对称减速带平均只会减少 20% 的速度投资。将减速带的幅度增加一个标准偏差，可进一步减少 8.33% 的低延迟投资。最后，引入对称减速带导致的投资水平与根本没有减速带相同。