Nine Challenges in Modern Algorithmic Trading and Controls

Abstract: This editorial article partially informs the algorithmic trading community about launching of the new journal "Algorithmic Trading and Controls" (ATC). ATC is an online open-access journal that publishes novel works on algorithmic trading and its control methodologies. In this inaugural article, we discuss nine major challenges that contemporary Algo trading faces. There is nothing superstitiously magical about the number "nine," but so is any other one. Several of these challenges are at the strategy level, including for example, trading of illiquid securities or optimal portfolio execution. Others are more at the level of risk management and controls, such as on how to develop automated controls, testing and simulations. The editorial views could be inevitably personal and biased, but have been explored with the most innocent intention of contributing to this important field in modern financial services and technologies.