HFT Firm Faces Charges For Causing “Oil Trading Mayhem”
by ilene - August 25th, 2010 12:59 pm
HFT Firm Faces Charges For Causing "Oil Trading Mayhem"
Courtesy of Zero Hedge
Could the tide finally be turning on the high frequency churners-cum-manipulators? In an exclusive report, Reuters informs that "a big high-frequency trading firm faces possible civil charges by regulators after its computer ran amok and sparked a frenzied $1 surge in oil prices in February, according to documents obtained by Reuters and sources familiar with the continuing investigation."
The firm in question is Infinium Capital Management, which confirmed that it is the company at the center of a six-month probe by CME Group Inc into why its brand new trading program malfunctioned and racked up a million-dollar loss in about a second, just before markets closed on February 3. And yes, once all is said and done, it will be precisely this kind of algos gone wild that are found to have caused the much more devastating move on May 6, as we have been claiming all alone, and which the HFT lobby has been fighting tooth and nail to bury under the rug.
The glitch explains for the first time the lightning-quick oil-trading surge of that day — and it may have been a catalyst for the abrupt and largely unexplained $5 slide amid record volumes the following two days.
The firm’s buying frenzy also reveals how faulty computer codes, known as algorithms, can spark sharp volatility and send electronic markets spinning all in the blink of an eye.
Futures exchange operator CME Group is looking into the incident, which occurred at the New York Mercantile Exchange and highlights some of the same electronic-trading concerns raised by May’s "flash crash" in the U.S. stock market.
The specifics on the actual trade:
Infinium, a household name in Chicago’s burgeoning trading community, relies on computer horsepower and quantitative models to earn razor-thin profits from short-term trading. It uses its own money to make markets and capitalize on tiny imbalances, a common high-frequency strategy.
The documents, dated March, reveal that Infinium used an algorithm that was less than a day old to execute a "lead/lag" strategy between an exchange-traded fund called United States Oil Fund, which tracks oil prices, and the U.S. crude benchmark future, West Texas Intermediate.
The algorithm was turned on at 2:26:28 p.m. (Eastern) on February 3, less than four minutes before NYMEX closed floor trading and settled oil prices. It
DID GOLDMAN SACHS MANIPULATE JOURNALISTS AND STOCK PRICE ON SAME DAY AS SENATE TESTIMONY?
by ilene - May 17th, 2010 12:31 am
Mark Ames, co-editor of The eXiled, suggests Goldman Sachs’s tentacles extend even farther than we may have imagined. Mark’s thought-provoking articles, such as "Confessions of a Wall St. Nihilist: Forget about Goldman Sachs, our Entire Economcy is Built on Fraud" and "Fraudonomics: 10 Fun Fraud Facts" are published at Mark’s online home, The-eXiled, and at the NY Press’s Fraudonomics.
The eXiled itself has fascinating history, being the second incarnation of The eXile, The eXile was a "Moscow-based English-
DID GOLDMAN SACHS MANIPULATE JOURNALISTS AND STOCK PRICE ON SAME DAY AS SENATE TESTIMONY?
Courtesy of Mark Ames
A reader brought to my attention a new rumor going around about the strange behavior of Goldman Sachs’s stock price. On April 27, the day Blankfein was dragged before Congress to testify about fraud, Goldman’s stock rose–even though every other financial stock in the S&P 500 dropped, all 78 of them, on a day when the overall S&P average tanked 2.3 percent.
According to Bloomberg that day:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. had the only gain among 79 financial companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Indexas executives testified to a Senate subcommittee about mortgage securities.
Goldman Sachs advanced 0.7 percent to $153.04, while theS&P 500 Financials Index retreated 3.4 percent.
It’s an obvious question, just wondering if anyone has looked into this because as one reader wrote, “it makes no sense whatsoever.” Except as an expensive PR exercise funded by the bank’s insiders.
Whatever the case, that unexpected stock jump turned out to be wonderful news, the billionaires’ smackdown on all the resentful parasites trying to take down Goldman Sachs–this according to all sorts of media lickspittles who are rooting for Goldman. Here for example is The New York Daily News gloating over Goldman’s unexpected stock price rise:
I would be happy to let the whole United States Senate curse at me for just a fraction of the $2.8 million Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein made while he was testifying before a subcommittee this week.
The opinions of the senators carry so little weight that