ATD Revenue and Competitors

In 1987, as the stock market was reeling from Black Monday, a finance professor at Rutgers University saw opportunity where others saw only chaos and blamed computers. David Whitcomb, a pioneer in "market microstructure" research realized that it was fundamental market structure flaws, a characteristic lack of liquidity in the market, and poorly-conceived "portfolio insurance" programs that led to the Dow's stunning 22 percent drop that October. Whitcomb believed that automation could improve the efficiency of trading without adversely affecting the markets and set out to create a system that would bear out that belief, despite the common Wall Street sentiment that computers could not be programmed to trade as well as human traders.