The Securities and Exchange Commission published a pair of internal studies early last week that examined automated, high-frequency trading, one of which was billed as the first study to break down the benefits of low-latency trading. This comes as the latest development in SEC Chair Mary Jo White's data-driven evaluation of domestic equity trading, a full-scale physical of U.S. equities that would preempt any new legislation. Austin Gerig, a financial economist for the SEC's Division of Economic and Risk Analysis and a former fellow at Oxford's Said Business School, co-authored both of the studies which revealed that low-latency trading strategies boosted market liquidity. “Low-latencies in markets... seem to aid the kind of speculative activity that provides liquidity … rather than the bad kind of activity that inhibits the work of liquidity providers," the authors wrote in the December 1 report. Asked whether or not regulations on high-frequency trading would hurt the current market, Fark.com founder Drew Curtis tells us that he doesn't believe it would have a negative effect. "Perhaps, but not the ones I've seen," says Curtis when asked about the potential damaging effects of such regulations. "HFT argues that the regulations will remove liquidity from the market but that's bogus," says Curtis, adding that high-frequency trading "isn't adding liquidity in the first place". As the SEC moves closer to possible regulation, it seems that they'll find support amongst an increasing number of experts.