Michael Lewis

High Frequency Trading (HFT) covers such a broad swathe of 'trading' and financial markets that Mark Cuban (yes, that Mark Cuban), who has been among the leading anti-HFT graft voices in the public realm, decided to put finger-to-keyboard to create an "idiots guide to HFT" as a starting point for broad discussion. With screens full of desperate "stocks aren't rigged" HFT defenders seemingly most confused about what HFT is and does, perhaps instead of 'idiots' a better term would be "practitioners."

Just buy the book Damnit, it’s all in there.

One has to wonder why we are dodging this truth about what we've become: a nation that turns a blind eye to skimmers, scammers and legal looting. As in the story of the Emperor's new clothes, the onlooker who declares the obvious - in this case, that the stock market is rigged - shatters the consensus lie.

"High-frequency traders are gaming the system, reaping billions in the process and undermining investor confidence in the fairness of the markets. It’s a growing cancer and needs to be addressed.  If confidence erodes further, the fuel of our free-enterprise system, capital formation, is at risk. We can’t allow that to happen. For sure, we still believe investing in equities is a primary path to long-term wealth creation, and we believe in the long-term structural integrity of the markets to deliver that over time for individual investors, which is all the more reason to be vigilant in removing anything that creates unfair advantage or undermines investor confidence... High-frequency trading isn’t providing more efficient, liquid markets; it is a technological arms race designed to pick the pockets of legitimate market participants. That flies in the face of our markets’ founding principles.

The Nikkei shot up last night because the Yen was weak and, best of all, Japan's $1.25Tn pension fund will be handing money to the Banksters to put into the stock market. 

Round 2 of the HFT vs Reality death match just took place on Bloomberg TV. Once again the clear winner was Katsuyama and Lewis version of the real world as Manoj Narang finally lost all credibility with the mind-0bumbing comment that "speed matters less in today's market than it has ever mattered." But the Tradeworx CEO was a background singer compared to Michael Lewis who explained in his clearest analogy yet how the casino works and then devoured the anchor's constant efforts to play down the "rigged" market perspective... "it's very clear that people are being front run in the market... so, why are you even arguing about this?"

Almost a month ago, we wrote "This Is The One Financial Product Now Targeted By The HFT Swarm", in which after briefly perusing the Virtu S-1 filing, we concluded that "one product stood out. It is highlighted on the chart below: FX."

We are happy to report that this time the mainstream media is following our reports much more closely then five years ago, because overnight none other than Bloomberg came out with "High-Frequency Traders Chase Currencies as Stock Volume Recedes" in which we read, guess what, "Forget the equity market. For high-frequency traders, the place to be is foreign exchange." But our readers already knew this of course...

John Stewart is stunned by the world of HFT (where "stock exchanges sell the right to advance information to high frequency traders [by locating their computers closest to the exchange]") and the mainstream media's immediate jump to defend it "as good for us", but as Michael Lewis explains "anyone whose livelihood is dependent on Wall Street [from CNBC, FOX and even the SEC] is invested in this... it sounds like a conspiracy." As Lewis explains, HFTs "function on volume and volatility" alone and "they know the prices before you do... which is illegal if it's a person, but as a computer, meh?"

Five years ago, we were the first to bring the world's attention to the staggering profitability of several firms that engaged in 'high frequency' trading that presented themselves as 'liquidity providers' and suggested (in our ever so humble way) that mark liquidity was in fact shrinking and this could lead to a 'black swan of black swans' long before the flash crash was even dreamed of. Fast forwarding to today, after hundreds of articles, not only is the mainstream "getting it" but such behemoths as Cliff Asness - who happens to run one of the world's biggest quant funds - are forced to pen a WSJ op-ed to explain it's all a fallacy and blame a lowly blogger (or digital dickweed) for starting all this naysaying five years ago.

We know what you're thinking... why didn't Virtu Financial's CEO Chris Concannon ban Twitter and YouTube? It seems that is the only thing the HFT firm is incapable of as just too much public scrutiny from various fact-full blogs and a major expose of the reality of the US stock 'market' was too much for even the greatest fools in the market to be fooled by:

• *VIRTU SAID TO DELAY IPO AMID FUROR OVER MICHAEL LEWIS BOOK

As we warned previously, it was only a matter of time before the hubris of VRTU's own trading perfection swung around and crushed it: "Simply put, first it was their boastful trading record that got the NYAG involved, and then Lewis slammed the door shut."

To think all it took to wake up not only the FBI (which generously provided a phone number to all interested parties so others could do its work for it) but the porn-addicts at the most corrupt, complicit and clueless, not to mention bought and paid for, "regulator" in US history, the SEC from a five year slumber - yes, we started warning about HFT in April of 2009 - was one Michael Lewis book. Moments ago we learned that the SEC, with a five year delay, has opened several investigations into HFT.

Suddenly the world is a buzz with the revelations that High Frequency Trading (HFT) may be doing more than actually harming the markets, it might be destroying the illusion they still are markets. This past Sunday the world at large was introduced that maybe, just maybe, something was amiss in the financial markets. Between the Federal Reserve's massive QE experiment amplified by the arms race of algorithmic technologies (aka HFT) to shave off a piece of that pie for themselves, the last few years have been nothing less than breathtaking. The only good thing that has come out lately on this whole issue of HFT is maybe for the first time in years the cover has been thrown off exposing the parasitic beast that’s been living just beneath the surface passing itself off as a symbiotic entity, rather than the pernicious monster its grown to be. Now the only question left to ask is: Can they invoke the death penalty for this creature... Without killing the patient?

While the topic of HFT-assisted "price discovery" has been beaten to death on these pages, and courtesy of Michael Lewis is now a household, and soon FBI, topic, what is more notable is that in addition to a better than expected jump in March car sales, GM also confirmed that the post-bankurptcy company has never had a greater difficult in liquidating warehoused inventory. As the chart below shows, dealer inventory of GM autos on US lots, aka Channel Stuffing, just rose to a new all time high, of 815,492 units, up from 805,769 last month, and up 15% from the 743.8K units parked at dealer lots a year ago. So 15% increase in unpurchased inventory vs a 4% increase in sales. Someone smarter than us can probably do the math here.

CNBC's last hour is likely the most-watched in a decade (perhaps because after 5 years of delays HFT is finally getting the exposure it has deserved from day one... and covered right here on this website since April 2009). From the HFT lobby explaining that "there is no front-running going on in HFT," to Michael Lewis explaining the "skimming" amd why "HFT is a tax on your investment dollars," the following clips are stunning in their total failure to calm an uneasy investing public. Howevere, when asked by the CNBC anchors whether his comment on the market being rigged was exaggeration he summed it all up perfectly... "Are you really under the illusion that the individual investor trusts Wall Street... the financial crisis wiped out any residue of trust for Wall Street even if they ever had it."

Considering the rancorous debate currently going on between Michael Lewis (we will have more to say about it shortly), DirectEdge CEO William O'Brien and IEX employee and latest HFT whistleblower, Brad Katsuyma, on CNBC, we decided that this would be an opportune moment to remind readers how BATS, which currently owns DirectEdge, IPOed, or rather how it failed to IPO, when it crashed and burned in its attempt to go public on March 23, 2012, when a rogue algo destabilized the order book and promptly sent the indicative price from around $16 to 0... in less than a second - perheps the perfect testament to just what HFT really does.... and just so readers have an objective perspective of how "unrigged" the market truly is.