We've mentioned often the technology arms race going on in the trading industry. Banks and funds seeking an edge continue to develop faster technology to trade securities at unfathomable speeds--with no end in sight. Corvil, a leader in monitoring trade speeds for financial clients, announced that it now measures trades in nanoseconds, which apparently represents the next speed barrier--replacing someday soon microseconds, which in turn replaced milliseconds.

A nanosecond is a billionth of a second. There are 1,000 nanoseconds in a microsecond, and there are 1,000 microseconds in a millisecond. It is hard for humans to grasp, but not machines, which are increasingly trading at these more refined units, though it will take some time for nanoseconds to become the widely accepted benchmark.

"The London Stock Exchange last week installed a new trading system, provided by a Sri Lankan technology company it bought in 2009, for its UK equities order book. The maximum speed--or latency, in the jargon--of trading it allows is 125 microseconds, which makes it marginally faster than Nasdaq OMX, the US exchange, and BATS Exchange."

But we would expect the acceleration to continue. The real wildcard here are the regulators. They have been warily watching the no-latency movement grip Wall Street and may be pondering some solutions to the Flash Crash that would slow trading down.

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