I'm happy that there seems to be some discontent here on the substance of this article. Indeed, we perceive market 'crashes' to be negative, but in fact they (necessarily) benefit as many people as they hurt. Being able to obtain stock in a company for fewer US$ can be a good thing. And who's to say that banning algorithmic trading will prevent rapid swings in the market? They happened before algorithmic trading was here, and they will happen afterwards.

All of this rhetoric seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to something the author is incapable of grokking (no doubt due to a limited human capacity to do so).