GETCO

Doubleline's Jeff Gundlach must not be a GETCO algo because unlike the algorithmic programs who are all that's left of traders in this policy farce of a manipulated market and who are programmed to BTFD especially when there is a massive stop hunt program about to be unleashed on 10-20 ES contracts, he is not buying stocks. Instead the bond manager has closed his July 2012 call when he called the top in Treasurys, and told Reuters that he has bought "more long-term Treasuries in the last month" than in the last four years." And this coming form the so-called new "bond king." Gundlach said he started buying benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes in the last month after yields popped above 2 percent, because he sees value there relative to other asset classes, including stocks, which he said are "overbought."

The last time we looked at the "hazardous" days for shorting in January and February, we found something very simple - being a bear on POMO days, or those days in which Ben Bernanke makes it his life's mission to personally annihilate anyone who dares to face his money-spewing helicopter-printer with something as pathetic as a sense of reality and a frontal lobe, leads to certain immediate or eventual destruction, depending on one's margin level. So thanks to the most recent monthly update of POMO days covering the month of March, here is Ben Bernanke at his most helpful, providing the schedule in which he, the NY Fed, and the Primary Dealers will proceed to rip the heads off those who happen to be short in the face of what are the now daily GETCO stop hunts that send the S&P higher by 5-15 point in minutes on, well, absolutely no news, except for the usual deluge of between $1 and $5 billion in additional purchasing handed over by Chairman Ben to the banks because, you see, they need the money. And sooner or later it will trickle down on everyone else.

At 10 am Eastern the Chairman will go before Senate to deliver his agency's semi-annual Monetary Policy Report to lawmakers. Tomorrow he will do the same before the House. Speaking before the Senate Banking Committee, Bernanke will face questions about the nation's current economic situation.  He is also likely to field lawmaker's comments on how the nation's economy will be impacted by sequestration. Perhaps someone will inquire about the Fed's exit plans, but that is unlikely as there are none. Perhaps someone else will inquire what Bernanke's closing print target for the S&P and the EURUSD are. We, and numerous GETCO synthetic momentum algos, are looking forward to both.

There was a time back in 2009 when GETCO was the absolute titan of the high frequency trading arena, printing money with the reckless abandon of a Federal Reserve on full tilt. It even got its own profile piece in the WSJ in the summer of 2009: "Meet Getco, High-Frequency Trade KingMeet Getco, High-Frequency Trade King." However, the good days were not to last as shortly thereafter we got a flash crash, then we got three + years of Ben Bernanke's (and every other bank's) central planning and some $10 trillion in combined exogenous liquidity to prop up the market, both of which resulted in the complete loss of faith in a standalone stock market by the retail investor (and once the current unwind of the December rotation from stocks into savings accounts over capital gains tax fears ends, the outflows will resume especially as latest ICI data shows with the smallest inflow into domestic equities to date in 2013). And since retail orders no longer would feed the frontrunning, sub-pennying, quote churning, flash crashing juggernaut that is HFT, that meant less revenue and profit for algo master GETCO. How much less? A whopping 82% less in the nine months ended September 30, 2012 compared to a year prior, and 92% less when annualizing 2012 results compared to the firm's heyday in 2008, the year in which it made a record $430 million in net income. Getco's net income as of September 30, 2012: a tiny $25 million.

For those bored with watching how much higher Getco and Citadel's algos can take the market on a resolution that is adverse for the US economy, that cuts consumer spending and cash flow, that does not address the real issue: government drunken sailor spending, and that means America will now labor for the next two months without being able to incur one additional dollar in net debt courtesy of breaching the debt ceiling on the last day of 2012 - in other words your typical kick-the-can-for-two-more-months non deal, we have good news: Jim Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer has released a compilation of his best articles from the past year for free to anyone who still cares about what actually may be happening in the US economy, besides the obvious - endless fiscal and monetary stimuli from both the Fed and Congress, which like, any lunch, are never free, even if the final invoice may take a while to arrive.

The ECB's original bond monetization program (the SMP) may now be defunct, having been replaced with the mythical OMT which will work as long as it never has to be used (see Spain), but its aftereffects linger on. Specifically, the aftermath of the SMP manifests itself in the weekly sterilization of accrued SMP bond purchases, which at last check amounted to some €208.5 billion. Why do we bring this up? Because a few hours earlier, the ECB failed, for the first time, to find enough demand and interest to sterilize the full amount of rolling peripheral bond purchases, and was instead able to find only enough bidders, 43 of them or the lowest in a year, to "sterilize" just €197.6 billion of the total weekly allottment. The last time the ECB failed in a sterilization action? November 29, 2011, one day before the coordinated global central bank bailout of 2011.

• U.S. Family of Mao’s General Assimilates, Votes for Obama (Bloomberg)
• Iron ore prices hit eight-month high (FT)... four months after plunging and crushing iron ore miners
• Obama seeks 60 Senate votes for cliff deal (MarketWatch)
• Need. Moar. InfinitQEeee: Japan PM adviser urges unlimited BOJ easing, higher price goal (Reuters)
• Yen Touches 16-Month Low Versus Euro Before Japan CPI (BBG)
• China consumers driving economic rebound (Reuters) - ot just year end window dressing to accompany the new Politburo
• Rajaratnam agrees to pay $1.5 million disgorgement in SEC case (Reuters)
• France should review 2013 deficit target with EU partners (Reuters)
• Monti-led poll alliance takes shape (FT)
• Bersani wants growth-oriented Europe (FT)

... and all through the collocated server house, GETCO algos were stirring, hoping (as this is the only "strategy" left) that maybe, just maybe, Obama can pull a unicorn out of his skittles-dispensing hat. He won't, and most likely we will get one last does of stern fingerpointing, harsh language and accusative condemnation of those wascaly wepublicans. But find out for yourselves in 15 short minutes, when the market may be closed, but futures will still be open, although at least subject to the limit down rule. Of course, if the news was good, it would have come before 4 pm...

It may not be apparent immediately, but in the aftermath of last night's epic collapse in fiscal cliff negotiations, which incidentally was perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain and who experienced last summer's debt ceiling fiasco, which sadly excludes all paid political and financial - including sellside - commentators, all of whom expected a prompt resolution to this polarized issue as recently as a week ago, there is major behind the scenes panic. Because while banks would write profuse, long-winded essays to explain the logic and rationality of the "deal", now that they are all faced with adjusting their narrative the best they can come up with are two sentence fragments such as this one from Citi's Steven Englander "Problem is that it is the right wing of the Republican Party that wouldn’t give Boehner their support, making it less likely that he could win broad support among Republicans for a compromise with the White House. Also he will have to spend next couple of days negotiating with both his own party and the Democrats without knowing how much he can deliver." The answer: nothing at all. In fact as Scott Rigell said “I’m not sure the people who have been up here 20 or 30 years really understand what the next iteration of this process is”.  He is speaking for pretty much everyone else who has now been made a total fool by the Black Swan that is Congress. As a reminder a 3 month delay resolution assures a US recession, and a ~20% or so minimum correction in the stock market, which has been priced for absolute perfection for months, and which will once again have to be used by Wall Street as a means to get a consensus out of DC. Just as we predicted over a month ago. Finally while we may have avoided the Mayan apocalypse, we do have a quad witching and a NASDAQ rebalance to look forward to. Enjoy!

No, really, there is a big, huge, massive rotation out of those dangerous, inflationary bonds into safe, predictable equities...

Just about a year after the failed attemped by the Deutsche Bourse to acquire the NY Stock Exchange, we get a friendly reminder that stock trading is a dying business, and venues that engage in it must consolidate or die. Sure enough, moments ago the Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE, announced it would acquire the NYSE for $33.12 or roughly $8.2 billion in stock and cash.

• ICE TO BUY NYSE EURONEXT FOR $33.12-SHR IN STOCK, CASH
• ICE PACT IS FOR ABOUT 67% SHRS, 33% CASH
• INTERCONTINENTALEXCHANGE TO ACQUIRE NYSE FOR ABOUT $8.2 BLN
• ICE TO FUND CASH IN DEAL WITH CASH ON HAND, EXISTING CREDIT
• NYSE EURONEXT HOLDERS TO OWN ABOUT 36% OF ICE SHRS POST DEAL
• ICE SAYS NIEDERAUER TO BE PRESIDENT COMBINED CO, CEO NYSE GROUP

It is unclear if the combined exchange will be called N-ICE.

• IMF Demands Partial Default for Cyprus (Spiegel)
• Boehner's 'Plan B' Gets Pushback (WSJ)
• Beijing criticises US ‘political checks’ (FT)
• White House Said to Tell Business Groups Talks Stall (BBG)
• NYSE tries to get hitched again: IntercontinentalExchange in talks to buy NYSE (Reuters) -> N-Ice coming?
• Greece faces ‘make or break’ year (FT)
• Fed rejects idea of consensus forecasts, "maybe forever": Fisher (Reuters)
• Rajoy Drives Spanish Revolution With Low-Cost Manufacture (BBG)
• Italian Senate Set for Budget Vote Before Monti Resigns (BBG)
• BOJ Loosens With Pledge to Review Inflation Objectives (BBG)
• Bowing To Abe, BOJ To Review Price Goal (WSJ)

• Republicans put squeeze on Obama in "fiscal cliff" talks (Reuters)
• Inquiry harshly criticizes State Department over Benghazi attack (Reuters)
• Banks See Biggest Returns Since ’03 as Employees Suffer (BBG)
• Italy president urges election be held on time (Reuters)
• Bank of England Says Sterling Hurting Economy (WSJ) - there's an app for that, it's called a Goldman BOE chairman
• China slowdown hits Indonesian farmers (FT)
• China dispute hits Japanese exports (FT)
• Market to get even more monopolized by the HFT king: Getco wins Knight with $2 bln sweetened offer (Reuters)
• MF Global Cases Focus on 'Letters' (WSJ)
• UBS fined $1.5 billion in growing Libor scandal (Reuters)
• Spotlight swings to interdealer brokers (FT)
• China Widens Access to Capital Markets (WSJ)
• With Instagram, Facebook Spars With Twitter (WSJ)

• Obama Concessions Signal Potential Bipartisan Budget Deal (BBG)
• Cerberus to sell gunmaker after massacre (CNN)
• With New Offers, Fiscal-Cliff Talks Narrow (WSJ)
• Judge rejects Apple injunction bid vs. Samsung (Reuters)
• U.S. policy gridlock holding back economy? Maybe not (Reuters)
• President fears for Italy’s credibility (FT)
• Struggles Mount for Greeks as Economy Faces Winter (WSJ)
• Abe leans on BoJ in post-election meeting (FT)
• Bank of Japan to mull 2 percent inflation target as Abe turns up heat (Reuters)
• EU exit is ‘imaginable’, says Cameron (FT)
• Mortgage Risk Under Fire in Nordics as Bubbles Fought (BBG)
• Sweden cuts interest rates to 1% (FT)
• External risks impede China recovery, more easing seen (Reuters)

Instead of uttering one more word in a long, seemingly endless tirade that stretches all the way to April 2009, we will this time let such dignified members of the credible, veritable status quo as Credit Suisse, who have released a two part primer on everything HFT related, with an emphasis on the broken market left in the wake of the "high freaks", which is so simple even a member of congress will understand (we would say a member of the SEC, but even at this level of simplicity its comprehension by the rank and file of the SEC is arguable). As Credit Suisse conveniently points out "market manipulation is already banned", but that doesn't mean that there are numerous loophole that HFT can manifest themselves in negative strategies that have virtually the same impact on a two-tiered market (those that have access to HFT and those that do not) as manipulation. Among such strategies are:

• Quote Stuffing: the HFT trader sends huge numbers of orders and cancels
• Layering: multiple, large orders are placed passively with the goal of “pushing” the book away
• Order Book Fade: lightning-fast reactions to news and order book pressure lead to disappearing liquidity
• Momentum ignition: an HFT trader detects a large order targeting a percentage of volume, and front-runs it.