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Here’s Why The Markets Have Suddenly Become So Turbulent
Here’s Why The Markets Have Suddenly Become So Turbulent
When stock markets are free-falling 10+% in a matter of days, it’s natural to seek some answers to the question “why now?”
Some are saying it was all the result of high-frequency trading (HFT), while others point to China’s modest devaluation of its currency the renminbi (a.k.a. yuan) as the trigger.
Trying to finger the proximate cause of the mini-crash is an interesting parlor game, but does it really help us identify the trends that will shape markets going forward?
We might do better to look for trends that will eventually drag markets up or down, regardless of HFT, currency revaluations, etc.
Five Interconnected Trends
At the risk of stating the obvious, let’s list the major trends that are already visible.
The China Story is Over
And I don’t mean the high growth forever fantasy tale, I mean the entire China narrative is over:
- That export-dependent China can seamlessly transition to a self-supporting consumer economy.
- That China can become a value story now that the growth story is done.
- That central planning will ably guide the Chinese economy through every rough patch.
- That corruption is being excised from the system.
- That the asset bubbles inflated by a quadrupling of debt from $7 trillion in 2007 to $28 trillion can all be deflated without harming the wealth effect or future debt expansion.
- That development-dependent local governments will effortlessly find new funding sources when land development slows.
- That workers displaced by declining exports and automation will quickly find high-paying employment elsewhere in the economy.
I could go on, but you get the point: the entire Story is over. (I explained why in a previous essay, Is China’s “Black Box” Economy About to Come Apart? )
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The HFT “Treasure Map” – Presenting The Rigged Stock Market’s Full “Latency Abritrage” In One Chart
The HFT “Treasure Map” – Presenting The Rigged Stock Market’s Full “Latency Abritrage” In One Chart
Last week, when poring through the SEC’s complaint over ITG’s criminal frontrunning of client order flow in a “experiment” prop trading group within its Posit dark pool known as “Project Omega”, we clearly laid out the “criminal fraud” that allowed the original dark pool to make money without any risk, and explained why HFT’s never lose money.
Only, in this particular case, the fraud was so egregious, even the SEC had to step in and slam ITG with the biggest fine on record for a private Wall Street exchange (at least until the fine about to be levied at Credit Suisse’s own dark pool, the biggest in the US, Crossfiner is revealed).
The reality is that most HFTs do not engage in such brazen criminal activity – most act within the confines of the law. And yet, as Virtu has shown year after year, they never lose money. How can the two coexist?
Simple: the answer is that in the aftermath of Reg NMS, and the terminal capture of regulators by those who benefit from market fragmentation, regulators blessed a two-tier market, one in which HFTs can frontrun non-HFT order flow and not be worried one bit about the consequences.
The technical term for this gross aberration of market fairness and efficiency is latency arbitrage, and it is best shown on the following annotated “map” courtesy of Nanex’ Eric Hunsader, laying out the embedded, and regulator blessed, latencies between the three big New Jersey exchange centers: Mahwah (NYSE), Secaucus (BATS), and Carteret (Nasdaq) for everyone but the top tier – the High Frequency Traders, whose only advantage is having the millions to spend both in one-time collocation setup as well as recurring microwave/laser fees to obtain faster data access which thenallows them to frontrun everyone else and generate massive returns on their investment. Returns that are due only to done thing: frontrunning.
What the map clearly shows is the unprecedented timing advantage HFTs have not only over the Securities Information Processor (SIP), which is used by virtually all non-HFT participants, who pay millions for real time feeds.
Banks Rig Treasury Market
Banks Rig Treasury Market
Boston’s public sector pension fund accuses all of the biggest US banks – the so-called “primary dealers” which transact directly with the United States Treasury Department and “have a special obligation to ensure the efficient function” of the American treasury bond market – of colluding to manipulate the $12.5 trillion U.S. Treasury market. The complaint alleges:
Defendants employed a two-pronged scheme to manipulate the Treasury securities market. First, Defendants used electronic chatrooms, instant messaging, and other electronic and telephonic methods to exchange confidential customer information, coordinate trading strategies, and increase the bid-ask spread in the when-issued market to inflate prices of Treasury securities they sold to the Class. Second, Defendants used the same means to rig the Treasury auction bidding process to deflate prices at which they bought Treasury securities to cover their pre-auction sales. Recent reports confirm that traders at some of these primary dealers “talked with counterparts at other banks via online chatrooms” and “swapped gossip about clients’ Treasury orders.
By engaging in this unlawful conduct, Defendants maximized the spread not only for transactions in the when-issued market, but also between their buy (auction) price and sell (when-issued) price.
***
This conduct lined the pockets of Defendants while raising prices to investors trading Treasury securities in the when-issued market, investors trading Treasury security-based futures and options, and investors transacting in instruments benchmarked to the prices of Treasury securities determined at auction, including certain bonds and other asset- backed securities and interest rate swaps.
Given the tight correlation between the Treasury securities prices in the spot market and futures markets, Defendants’ manipulation of the auction prices for Treasury securities also directly and proximately caused injury to individuals and entities that traded in Treasury futures and options on U.S. exchanges, including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
High-frequency trading has also long been used to manipulate the treasury market.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
In Latest Market Rigging Scandal, Wall Street Now Sued For Treasury Market Manipulation
“Defendants used electronic chatrooms, instant messaging, and other electronic and telephonic methods to exchange confidential customer information, coordinate trading strategies.”“Traders at some of these primary dealers talked with counterparts at other banks via online chatrooms and swapped gossip.”
Sound familiar?
Those quotes are from a 61-page complaint filed in the Southern District of New York wherein Boston’s public sector pension fund accuses all US primary dealers (the cabal of usual suspect dealer banks that transact directly with Treasury and “have a special obligation to ensure the efficient function” of what was formerly the deepest, most liquid market on the planet) of colluding to manipulate the $12.5 trillion US Treasury market.
The alleged scheme (tipped here last month) was remarkably simple and involved precisely the same sort of conspiratorial, chatroom shenanigans employed by the very same banks who, at various times, have colluded to rig FX, gold, various -BORs, ISDAfix, and pretty much everything else.
In short, the banks simply conspired to keep the spread between the when issued price and the price at auction as wide as possible, thus inflating their profits at the expense of everyone else where “everyone else” includes institutional investors and hedge funds all the way down to retirees and Main Street in general. From the complaint:
Defendants employed a two-pronged scheme to manipulate the Treasury securities market. First, Defendants used electronic chatrooms, instant messaging, and other electronic and telephonic methods to exchange confidential customer information, coordinate trading strategies, and increase the bid-ask spread in the when-issued market to inflate prices of Treasury securities they sold to the Class. Second, Defendants used the same means to rig the Treasury auction bidding process to deflate prices at which they bought Treasury securities to cover their pre-auction sales. Recent reports confirm that traders at some of these primary dealers “talked with counterparts at other banks via online chatrooms” and “swapped gossip about clients’ Treasury orders.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
HFT, inept regulators & Fed distortion = more flash crashes
HFT, inept regulators & Fed distortion = more flash crashes
As luck would have it, we had Joe Saluzzi lined up to record a podcast the day the news broke recently that the suspected culprit for the 2010 flash crash, Navinder Singh Sarao, had been arrested. Saluzzi is co-founder of Themis Trading LLC, long-time cautionary on the dangers of high-frequency algorithmic trading, and co-author of Broken Markets: How High Frequency Trading and Predatory Practices on Wall Street Are Destroying Investor Confidence and Your Portfolio.
In this discussion, Joe shares his suspicions about Sarao (a contributor to the crash, but highly unlikely to be the actual cause) and then provides his expert assessment of what has been done in the intervening years since the flash crash to safeguard the market against a similar failure (precious little). In his opinion, a winner-take-all high-tech arms race, clueless and toothless regulators, and central bank price distortion are conspiring to make us more vulnerable — not less — to another systemic breakdown:
What’s happened is the markets have evolved and they’ve obviously embraced computerization and technology. Some things have been very good for the markets and brought down cost. But regulators don’t seem to have evolved. They don’t seem to have caught up with times and they don’t necessarily have the eyes and ears out there to monitor things on a micro-second or nano-second level.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“Another Crisis Is Coming”: Jamie Dimon Warns Of The Next Market Crash
“Another Crisis Is Coming”: Jamie Dimon Warns Of The Next Market Crash
Last October’s Treasury flash crash — which Gregg Berman will tell you wasn’t the fault of HFT and which will likely repeat at some point or another thanks to the fact that Fed purchases have reduced market depth — may no longer be a once every three billion year occurrence as statistics would dictate, Jamie Dimon observes, in his latest letter to JPM shareholders, before suggesting that the event “should make you question statistics.” Amusingly, Dimon seems to confuse cause and effect a bit, as it’s really not the fault of “statistics” per se, but rather the fault of shifting market dynamics (and by “dynamics” we mean increased manipulation and never-before-seen distortions and dislocations) that have rendered the old statistical models obsolete. But at least Dimon sees the event, and recent similar shakeups in FX markets for what they are: “warning shots across the bow.” Here’s Dimon:
Recent activity in the Treasury markets and the currency markets is a warning shot across the bowTreasury markets were quite turbulent in the spring and summer of 2013, when the Fed hinted that it soon would slow its asset purchases. Then on one day, October 15, 2014, Treasury securities moved 40 basis points, statistically 7 to 8 standard deviations – an unprecedented move – an event that is supposed to happen only once in every 3 billion years or so (the Treasury market has only been around for 200 years or so – of course, this should make you question statistics to begin with).Some currencies recently have had similar large moves. Importantly, Treasuries and major country currencies are considered the most standardized and liquid financial instruments in the world.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How HFT Destroys Markets: 50 Pages Of Evidence
How HFT Destroys Markets: 50 Pages Of Evidence
Back in 2009, when aside from a few insiders, nobody had heard of HFT, Zero Hedge launched its crusade to expose the algorithmic scourge that has since then caused an equity, treasury and now US Dollar flash crash, and has been the subject of a Michael Lewis bestseller and resulted in countless market halts and failures.
More importantly, there is now roughly 50 pages of just bibliography citing the evidence-based, academic research that has shown just how pervasively, maliciously and premeditatedly HFTs manipulate, destabilize, impair and otherwise destroy every single market in which they participate, and what’s worse: result in incremental costs to investors, debunking the biggest lie HFTs spread about themselves – that they, being the gregarious humanist vacuum tubes they are, make trading cheaper and more accessible for the small investor.
And the biggest paradox: despite all this proof – which we urge every readers to sent to their favorite SEC regulator – America’s corrupt enforcers of securities laws continue to turn a blind eye to all the crime that takes place every single day. Why? Because they collect a portion of the proceeds, of course, and because they need a scapegoat to blame once the market crashes.
We are grateful to “R. T. Leuchtkafer” who put it all together.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Troy Will Burn – the Big Deal about Big Data
Troy Will Burn – the Big Deal about Big Data
I know, I know … I’m a broken record and a Cassandra, with 2 successive notes on Big Data. But I don’t care. This is a much larger structural risk for markets and investors than HFT and the whole Flash Boys brouhaha, it’s just totally under the radar and hasn’t surfaced yet. And unfortunately, just as I think Jeb Bush speaks for most Americans – Democrat and Republican alike – when he says that he doesn’t get what all the fuss is about when it comes to metadata collection and Big Data technologies, so do I think that most investors – institutional and individual alike – are blithely unaware of how their market identities can be stolen and their market behaviors influenced, all in plain sight.
Jeb Bush should know better. I think he probably does. Investors may not know better yet, but they will soon, one way or another. As you read this note, a small group of hedge fund managers are doing to you exactly what the NSA is doing to “terrorists”.
Today a handful of governments use Big Data to identify individual behavioral patterns so that certain individuals can be killed. Today a handful of hedge funds use Big Data to identify investor behavioral patterns so that certain investors can be crushed. Today Big Data is primarily an instrument of social information gathering, with a powerful but punctuated impact on those individuals on the receiving end of a drone strike or a targeted trade.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Michael Lewis Reflects on His Book Flash Boys, a Year After It Shook Wall Street to Its Core
Michael Lewis Reflects on His Book Flash Boys, a Year After It Shook Wall Street to Its Core
When I sat down to write Flash Boys, in 2013, I didn’t intend to see just how angry I could make the richest people on Wall Street. I was far more interested in the characters and the situation in which they found themselves. Led by an obscure 35-year-old trader at the Royal Bank of Canada named Brad Katsuyama, they were all well-regarded professionals in the U.S. stock market. The situation was that they no longer understood that market. And their ignorance was forgivable. It would have been difficult to find anyone, circa 2009, able to give you an honest account of the inner workings of the American stock market—by then fully automated, spectacularly fragmented, and complicated beyond belief by possibly well-intentioned regulators and less well-intentioned insiders. That the American stock market had become a mystery struck me as interesting. How does that happen? And who benefits?
By the time I met my characters they’d already spent several years trying to answer those questions. In the end they figured out that the complexity, though it may have arisen innocently enough, served the interest of financial intermediaries rather than the investors and corporations the market is meant to serve. It had enabled a massive amount of predatory trading and had institutionalized a systemic and totally unnecessary unfairness in the market and, in the bargain, rendered it less stable and more prone to flash crashes and outages and other unhappy events. Having understood the problems, Katsuyama and his colleagues had set out not to exploit them but to repair them. That, too, I thought was interesting: some people on Wall Street wanted to fix something, even if it meant less money for Wall Street, and for them personally.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US Taxpayers Pay For SEC to Arrange Early Release of Data to High Speed Trading Firms
US Taxpayers Pay For SEC to Arrange Early Release of Data to High Speed Trading Firms.
The SEC reportedly does not like trading on information that is not yet public. Just ask SAC Capital, or if you prefer, watch the plethora of insider trading SEC news conferences in general.
Why, even this morning there is a WSJ story about the SEC’s investigation into the early leak and release of Medicare cancer related funding data , which is an investigation into a different government agency!
And remember last year, when the SEC began investigating Thompson Reuter’s early release of ISM data to certain high speed subscribers. While the SEC brought no charges against Thompson Reuters, the data firm did subsequently suspend its “tiered release” practice:
On Monday, Thomson Reuters announced that it was suspending a so-called “tiered release” of market moving data to elite clients. The data and news service had been selling the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment numbers to paying clients at 9:54:58 on release days—two seconds before the information went to a broader set of clients at 9:55 am. That created an opportunity for high speed trading firms to rake in profits before the rest of the market knew which direction the impending news would propel trading.
– See more at: http://blog.themistrading.com/us-taxpayers-pay-for-sec-to-arrange-early-release-of-data-to-high-speed-trading-firms/#sthash.Q5Ovnhx5.dpuf
