"A great war of algorithms is already under way" – scientist Neil Johnson

We saw a transition in the financial ecosystem from the Keynesian "animal spirits" of desk traders and investors to "microbe spirits" by computer algorithms simpler than animals or humans -- but just much, much, much faster. To understand these new phenomena we need a complexity approach. Econophysicists and financial gurus in complexity are no more in the fringe. What our work suggests is that since this war is already under way, and because from our paper it seems to correlate very well with observable crashes in the markets over timescales such as months, then any government watchdog/regulator charged with controlling their financial system also ought to have its own'troops on the ground'.» Not that this is wrong, but you can see that this level of competition would be very ferocious -- which is what happens in the markets.»