The practice of high-frequency - or algorithmic - trading, which uses computerized algorithms to analyse market data, has come under attack in Europe and Australia.

A report by news agency Reuters said the European Central Bank’s policymaker Ewald Nowotny, who was speaking at conference on regulation, said he wanted to propose a ban on some financial market activity – namely high-frequency trading.

On the other side of the world the Australian Newspaper reported that Australian Securities Exchange Chief Executive Elmer Funke Kupper said regulators are now looking to put measures in place to keep algo trading under control.

He was particularly concerned with the placing of orders using high-speed technologies that were never going to be fulfilled, which can distort he market and create inefficiencies, from which the trader can profit.

"We want to continue to tighten the economics of the practice," Funke Kupper said.

He wants to see some “meaningful price improvement” on trades that take place in dark pools – at present any trade worth more than AU$1m can take place anonymously.

According to the report by The Australian, trading in off-exchange venues such as dark pools has grown since high-frequency trading was introduced in Australia by the ASX less than a year ago, when the market was opened up to lower trading costs and improve liquidity.

The ASX even built a new data center with new technology to allow for algo trading, and as of August this year, it said dark execution, made possible by the rise of electronic trading, made up about 25% of the ASX’s total trading activity in the six months prior.

Overall, high-frequency trading has been criticised for allowing unfair technological advantage.

But more and more exchanges are opening up their markets.

Just this week, German exchange operator Deutsche Boerse AG said it was working with Fitch Ratings to provide low-latency access to Fitch’s ratings decisions through Deutsche Boerse data centers around the world.

Activities such as this could be affected if Nowotny’s proposal for Europe goes ahead. He wants to take a much more drastic approach, placing bans on some financial market activity so as not to leave loopholes in the system, according to Reuters in Vienna.

“For example with high-frequency trading there is nothing to be regulated, it is to be banned. There is no really demonstrable net advantage from this,” he said.

The European Central Bank was put forward by the European Commission just the day before Nowotny spoke as a body that could be put in charge of supervising Eurozone banks. The plan still needs to be approved by the 27 European Union states.