6 Thanks to advances in telecommunications and computing, the speed of trading has increased at least a millionfold. 7 Advances in computing and faster access to trading platforms have also allowed new types of firms and trading strategies to enter the market. Algorithmic and high-frequency trading firms deploy a wide and diverse range of strategies.
Another period of high integration, in the decades prior to World War I, ended abruptly as a financial crisis of global proportions, accompanied by a credit crunch, broke apart bilateral arrangements and paved the way for several rounds of retaliatory tariff increases. Multilateralism has been a cornerstone of economic expansion since World War II.