#8217;s of a floor trading system, but with nearly every market, and all newly established markets being fully automated, there is becoming less and less support for the traditional exchange floors. Technological advances have enabled many if not all parts of the trading process to be completely automated. In 1996, the Australian Treasurer announced an inquiry into the Australian finical system. This report is the Wallis report, it was able to conclude, among many other things that “Technology development and innovation continues to facilitate easy access to the full range of financial products (which) will continue to stimulate growth in new and more sophisticated financial products, and will enable non-traditional providers of such products to access the financial system. Technology will continue to provide more efficient and cost-effective information and product delivery systems.” (Viney, 2000:pp64). This efficient and cost-effective information delivery is now nearly universal in use, with the LSE in 1986, enabled trading with telephone quotes, then moved to an electronic and largely dematerliased share-settlement in CREST in 1996, and to the electronic order book SETS for its largest 100 plus stocks in 1997. The Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) introduced SEATS in 1987, which was a supplement for floor trading, which was abolished between 1987 to 1990. In 1989 FAST was introduced, and in 1994 CHESS was put in place as the ASX clearing house Many other international links have been in placed by the ASX, like the alliance with NASDAQ (1999) and the Perpetual Registrars (2000), which have all been put in place to try to keep the market efficient and competitive as possible. These automations have ‘surprisingly missed’ (National Journal, 2000) the NYSE, the worlds biggest stock exchange. “America’s supremacy in capital markets is threatened by systems which are not burned by some of our tradit...
