Navinder Sarao has lost his appeal and is set to be extradited to the USA, where he faces charges with a possible maximum sentence of 380 years. He is accused of causing the "flash crash" in 2010, when the Dow Jones index dropped by 1000 points. He ran his trading from his bedroom in his parents' house and it is claimed that he made more than £30M (approximately $40M) in 5 years. His parents had no idea what he was doing, nor the scale of his income. He is accused of placing trades that he never intended to fill, so, to this naive person, it's hard to distinguish what he did from that of the large high-speed trading firms.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by number11 on Sunday October 16 2016, @07:46PM
Orders, once placed, cannot be withdrawn in less than 24 hours.
Better to apply a very small (0.1%) transaction tax on every trade. (Though I'd argue that if we're going to have sales taxes, they should apply to purchasing stocks just like they apply to purchasing anything else.) For someone who buys and sells based on actual (or perceived) value, the cost is trivial, because they're dealing in much larger percentages of profit and loss. And use the resulting tax flow to rebuild the country's infrastructure.