Paul Myners, Britain's former financial services minister, has called for a government investigation into whether high-frequency trading exacerbated recent share price swings, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
Britain's Treasury and the Financial Services Authority, the country's financial market watchdog, should look into whether so-called black box trading contributed to the market turmoil, the paper said.
"High frequency trading appears so detached from the true function of capital markets, but is potentially fraught with hazard," the Telegraph quoted Myners as saying.
"It definitely deserves more attention than either the FSA or the Treasury has given it." Black box traders rely on super-fast computers to place thousands of buy and sell orders per second in an effort to exploit short-term trading opportunities.
High-frequency trading accounts for about 50 percent of trading volumes on the London Stock Exchange, and has been blamed for amplifying price swings.
Some believe the practice caused the "flash crash" on Wall Street in May last year, when the Dow Jones industrial average fell 700 points in minutes.
World stock markets have over the past month oscillated sharply amid a sell-off prompted by worries over a faltering US economy and potential sovereign defaults in Europe, with Britain's FTSE 100 share index slumping 11 percent since July 8.
Myners could not immediately be reached for comment.