Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
While we eagerly await for the SEC to retract its official 104 page report summarizing the "Findings regarding the market events of May 6, 2010" in light of "recent developments", and as we follow the shift in the official narrative to the outright bizarre, in which the entire Flash Crash is now blamed on just one man (as opposed to just Waddell & Reed as per the previous narrative), we learn that the latest scapegoat for a broken, fragmented and manipulated market, Navinder Sarao, is not quite so eager to go to minimum security prison in the US for doing what leads to a slap on the wrist when someone like Citadel or Virtu does it, and will challenge the CFTC's attempt to pin everything on him.
[Note: Traders think Sarao's arrest is a joke. TRADERS: The 'Flash Crash' arrest is a joke.
See also: Virtu Explains Why It Lost Money On Just One Trading Day In 6 Years. The machines at Virtu trade over 5 million times a day and don't lose money. The amount of money Virtu trades must be orders of magnitude greater than the amount Sarao was trading, judging by the Virtu IPO and key statistics on Yahoo vs. Sarao's modest accomodations. Sarao trades in the basement of the house pictured below. Virtu's (VIRT) market cap is $2.31 billion dollars. Virtu's revenue last year was $645 million. The point is that – apparently – it's not the activity that makes an action legal or illegal, it's who is doing the activity and the words we use to describe it. In Virtu's case, the activity is called "operating as a market maker and liquidity provider to the financial markets worldwide." The picture on the right is from Virtu's website. ~ Ilene]
Bloomberg reports that Sarao, 36, was in London court earlier today following his arrest by British police for being charged in Chicago with 22 criminal counts including fraud and market manipulation and said he will fight an extradition request by U.S. prosecutors over his role in the 2010 flash crash.
As previoisly reported, Sarao engaged in what every other HFT firms on a daily basis: namely spoofing. However, because he is a foreigner, he was easy prey for the US "justice" system, and as a result it is he that has been picked as a scapegoat (perhaps because the official investigation into Virtu, Citadel and the other HFT firms revealed something so dramatic it needed an easy and available cover up).
In the US he faces up to several decades in prison: wire fraud is punishable in the U.S. by a maximum prison term of 20 years, commodities fraud by a sentence of as long as 25 years, and commodities manipulation and spoofing by terms of as long as 10 years, or a $1 million fine.
The strategy “virtually ensured” that his orders wouldn’t be filled, and Sarao almost always canceled his bids without executing them, the Justice Department complaint said.
CME, which runs the exchange where his trades took place, declined to comment Tuesday on the situation.
What are they going to say: "everyone else does it but please keep quiet", or that Sarao singlehandedly managed to smash the E-mini bidstack which also included every central bank on the bid side, because recall we now know that "Central Banks Trade S&P500 Futures."
So yeah, one single Brit managed to overpower every central bank on the bid side and crash the market.
And he did it all from here: quite literally his basement, perhaps while wearing pyjamas.
See if you can spot the massive array of microwave towers, fiber optic cables and laser transceivers next to his trading fortress.
Incidentally, those curious, here is his "188/289" block algo in action – it was observed years ago by Nanex. Apparently the combined SEC, CFTC, and DOJ did not have enough man and processing power to figure out what one single man did years ago.
Sarao's algo, now with Nanex tick chart goodness! HiRez: http://t.co/5JtyvhNsEC pic.twitter.com/afyLqoFzJB
— rockhowse (@rockhowse) April 21, 2015
A close look at Sarao's #HFT spoofing algo placing/canceling orders in the eMini on flash crash day: pic.twitter.com/pmivURnwbI
— Eric Scott Hunsader (@nanexllc) April 21, 2015
Finally, since this ridiculous story will be around for a while, here is some further detail on the so-called Flash Crasher from Bloomberg.
