Now THAT is an interesting idea...
"...Kelleher thinks Congress should focus on taxing orders, not transactions, because a staggering amount of all stock trade orders (some estimates say 99%) are canceled because of high-frequency trading strategies. Critics say those orders are evidence that high-speed traders are manipulating the market by creating the appearance of demand where there is none.
“A financial fee on orders could be the death knell for predatory high frequency trading,” he said. “Everyone will be better off — except for the predators.”
In thinking about how to lower the impact from HFT, I was pondering the idea of order delays, where once an order was placed, it could not be changed or cancelled after a fixed amount of time. Say...5 seconds?
But then I realized that it would create a blocky movement or could be circumvented.
So how about combining the two? You cannot cancel or change an order within 5 seconds of placing it, or it will be charged a small fee?