This animated GIF created by the Nanex pictures the rise of high-frequency trading (or HFT) volumes across all US stock exchanges between 2007 and 2012. The initial murmur, the brewing storm, the final detonation: not just unsettling, it’s terrifying.

HFT trading volumes across all U.S. stock exchanges between 2007 and 2012
credit: Nanex Research, hosted by imgur.com

This is what high frequency trading looks like, when specially programmed computers make massive bets at lightning speed.

We don’t know is what the long term consequences are of all this hyper-volume as depicted by the Nanex GIF and the kind of systemic risks created from the market’s ongoing evolution from human traders to rapidfire AI. Sometimes things go wrong, a software glitch, an algorithm gone rogue and the music stops, like a couple weeks ago when Knight Capital lost $10 million a minute when it’s trading platform went haywire or during the infamous Flash Crash when the Dow dropped 1000 points in mere minutes.

Read the excellent full Mother Board article here.