Nasdaq CEO says exchanges need to be vigilant against bad actors

By John McCrank

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Exchanges need to constantly be on the lookout for abusive trading behaviour in order to protect the resiliency of the marketplace, Robert Greifeld, chief executive officer of Nasdaq OMX Group said on Thursday.

"We have to have the assumption that bad actors will try to do bad things within the market," Greifeld said in an interview.

U.S. authorities charged a UK futures trader this week with allegedly manipulating futures markets and possibly playing a role in the May 2010 Wall Street "flash crash" that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly slide over 1,000 points, temporarily wiping out nearly $1 trillion in market value.

Greifeld said that new types of surveillance methods, such as pattern recognition software, make it easer to spot the type of activities the UK trader was accused of executing.

Nasdaq acquired SMARTS, a market surveillance firm that focuses on exchanges and brokers in 2010, and BWise, which focuses on risk management and compliance software in 2012.

(Reporting by John McCrank; Editing by Bernard Orr)