Inside the Flash Crash Report
by ilene - October 16th, 2010 7:43 pm
Pam Martens points out that in patching up May 6th’s market meltdown by breaking certains trades, “busts” only applied to trades occurring between 2:40 p.m. and 3 p.m. when the stock had moved 60% or more from its 2:40 p.m. price. "The busts that were allowed covered 5.5 million shares and two-thirds of these trades had been executed at less than $1.00… half of the share volume in these bizarre trades came from just two firms and half the time they were exclusively trading with each other." The report – amazingly – never names these firms which had their own bad trades undone by that controversial decision that left average investors with large losses. - Ilene
By PAM MARTENS, originally published at CounterPunch
The breathlessly awaited government report that promised to shore up public confidence by explaining why the stock market briefly plunged 998 points on May 6, with hundreds of stocks momentarily losing 60 per cent or more of their value, was released last Friday, October 1. Its neatly crafted finger-pointing to a small Kansas mutual fund firm which has been around since 1937, was immediately embraced as mystery solved by the stalwarts of the corporate press. This was done with only slightly less zeal than bestowed on the story of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction spun out of the George W. Bush administration.
The New York Times headlined with “Single Sale Worth $4.1 Billion Led to Flash Crash.” The Washington Post went with “How One Automated Trade Led to Stock Market Flash Crash.” The Wall Street Journal led with “How a Trading Algorithm Went Awry.” Hundreds of similar headlines followed in similarly expensive media real estate. But as with the rush to war on bogus intel, the corporate press may be further damaging its credibility with the American people by ignoring the dangerous market structure that emerges in a closer reading of this report.
The so-called Flash Crash report was the product of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and consists of 104 pages of data that is unintelligible to most Americans, including the media that are so confidently reporting on it. It names no names, including the firm it is fingering as the key culprit in setting off the crash. Earlier media reports say the firm is…