Courtesy of Pam Martens.
R. Tarmara de Silva, a Lawyer in the Battle Against the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
Three years before bestselling author Michael Lewis stunned the world on 60 Minutes on March 30 of this year with the announcement that “stock market’s rigged,” lawyer R. Tamara de Silva had made the case quite poignantly on her law firm’s blog. Even more importantly, she simultaneously called on the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice to commence an investigation.
It was only after the charges in the Lewis book, “Flash Boys,” went viral around the globe that the FBI, Department of Justice and SEC acknowledged that there might be a problem with high frequency trading and the integrity of U.S. markets. Subpoenas are now flying.
On January 17, 2011 at 9:23 p.m., de Silva wrote on her blog:
“High frequency trading firms make profits of almost $21 billion a year by using inside information to cheat.
“High frequency trading firms (‘HFTs’) utilize a series of algorithms to take advantage of the computers’ speed and proximity to the marketplaces to get information about orders and price before every other market participant. The physical exchanges like NYSE, NASDAQ and CBOE lease out space to HFTs that allows HFTs to place their supercomputers directly next to the supercomputers of the exchanges thereby giving the HFTs advantages of milliseconds and microseconds — to see price and order information (inside information) before anyone else that is not paying for co-location and does not have a supercomputer with algorithms at the physical exchange…
…
