We aim to identify potential vulnerabilities in investment management and financial trading structures that malicious agents can exploit. The opportunities for malicious trading have always existed. In the past, threats have been market “directional” but today they can be disguised as market “noise” and distributed. The “anomalies” in market structure can be systematically triggered.

We consider the most significant potential threat rising from the prolonged loss of market liquidity leading to forced disruption of trading across many asset markets. We focus on a single specific objective, “the most probable” destabilisation of price discovery that can lead to difficulties in asset valuation, widespread loss of confidence and forced asset redemptions. In extreme, this could evolve to the point of endangering financial stability.

Given the vast range of issues, we can only hope to and establish cross-disciplinary links and make a modest contribution to the future research agenda, but an outline of a possible threat that is organisationally structured to mimic bona fide entities where the agents can be disguised as cross-financed “proprietary trading” operations is presented.