“U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder promised Congress a thorough investigation into whether high-frequency trading violates laws against insider trading.

“Holder said he is responding to concerns being raised about whether the practice creates an uneven playing field for investors.

“The department is committed to ensuring the integrity of our financial markets, and we are determined to follow this investigation wherever the facts and the law may lead,” Holder said in testimony today at a hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said that its agents are probing whether firms that conduct high-frequency trading get an unfair jump on the competition by using computers and data lines to gain access to non-public information. The bureau has taken the unusual step of publicly appealing for traders and stock-exchange workers to blow the whistle on possible manipulation tied to the super-fast computer networks.”

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Read full Bloomberg article here.