The programs would be run on the markets server and have acces to news sources, financial data and government reports.

It seems as though encoding all of Earth's news is a task more suited to humanity. Perhaps I am being somewhat naive, but how is building a news database that is program readable more efficient than skipping the step of creating a program? As best as I can figure, the advantage is that the markets would all get the same info at the same time.

In terms of making money, I would expect such a model to begin competing on manipulating the news feeds. I suppose this already happens to a certain degree? The other trickiness I can see is selling a program to a million people and then creating your own that explicitly out maneuvers the masses.

It is an interesting concept, though.