Investopedia / Julie Bang An algorithm is a set of instructions for solving a problem or accomplishing a task. One common example of an algorithm is a recipe, which consists of specific ...

Ordinary programming algorithms tell the computer what to do in a straightforward way. For example, sorting algorithms turn unordered data into data ordered by some criteria, often the numeric or ...

These “sniffing algorithms”—used, for example, by a sell-side market maker—have the built-in intelligence to identify the existence of any algorithms on the buy side of a large order.