Algo-trading is used in many forms of trading and investment activities including:
Mid- to long-term investors or buy-side firms—pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies—use algo-trading to purchase stocks in large quantities when they do not want to influence stock prices with discrete, large-volume investments.
Short-term traders and sell-side participants—market makers (such as brokerage houses), speculators, and arbitrageurs—benefit from automated trade execution; in addition, algo-trading aids in creating sufficient liquidity for sellers in the market.
Systematic traders—trend followers, hedge funds, or pairs traders (a market-neutral trading strategy that matches a long position with a short position in a pair of highly correlated instruments such as two stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or currencies)—find it much more efficient to program their trading rules and let the program trade automatically.