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Why Does Someone Keep Losing Money On AAPL In The Last Second Of Trading?
Via Nanex,
In the last second of trading on January 2, 2013, trades executed more than $3 above existing market prices in Apple Computer Corp (symbol AAPL). These trades were marked ISO, which means the trader submitting the orders wanted to execute at these higher prices. Why? Good question. This has happened before (as Nanex are so excellent at uncovering): see Apple and Google's Last Second.
1. AAPL - 1 second interval chart showing trades color coded by exchange.
Several ISO trades with much higher prices appear from BATS (pink) and NSX (gold) in the last second of trading.

2. AAPL - 50 millisecond interval chart showing trades color coded by exchange. Zooming in from Chart 1.

3. AAPL - 50 millisecond interval chart showing bids, asks and trades color coded by exchange.
The trades execute against existing offers. Coupled with the ISO condition indicates these were intentionally executed at prices significantly above market price.

4. AAPL - 5 millisecond interval chart showing trades color coded by exchange. Zooming in further.

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Well how do YOU paint the tape?
"Painting the tape" was supposed to be illegal. This is stock market where John Corzine steals $1.5 billion and no one says a word.
Free Corzine!!!
In some contexts a rallying cry, in this context an accurate description.
“An apple trade a day keeps Doctor Ben away."
-Kevin
you have the chart, replicate the trade and shut down the algo....noob
Algo's probing algo's, nothing to see here... move along~!
Probably some average joe's retirement account broker giving them the "best" buy price..
Well at least you have someone looking. In Australia, a whole sector has completely gone over to price manipulation, where every trade sometimes is done at bid during a day yet the share price increases.
Also, major pension fund management companies use funds entrusted to them to ramp their own share prices. Nothing being done about it.
Check out my presentation on fraud in the Australian listed investment company sector:
http://s1144.photobucket.com/albums/o489/_DrBenway/The%20Great%20Austral...
Snatch the pebble from my hand grasshopper.
OK....now try again.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paintingthetape.asp
http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Painting+the+Tape
The definitions talk about creating fake volume but this was a bogus buy at a high price to try to drive Apple higher and also show up as the high price of the day. The avg Joe who might own 100 shares would check and see Apple's high price today as this fake buy. They are really trying to pump and prop up Apple. Apple IS the market now.
Corzined!
It is total manipulation and the software is supposed to catch these BS trade orders to insure it does not happen. This is total manipulation. It is so blatant because it was done within milliseconds of the close.
Nanex and Zero Hedge are all that we have left now that the SEC has decided to sleep through all of this or just let the Corzines get away with this.
Bravo Zero Hedge!
Tyler(s) nailed it. I looked at a few charting programs for today and the end of day price for Apple is $555. One trade $6 higher than the real high for the day?
Now here is the question - with milliseconds left - did the HFT or Algo programs see that fake $555 trade as a real trade and kick in to drive up the SPY, QQQ and any other index Apple is in at the close?
This is so corrupt.
Can we get the name and address of the person responsible for this?
We could give you that info but I doubt that you speak Binary.
We could give you that info but I doubt that you speak Binary.
It seems that I can post Binary
It's the Bernank address.
I wondered why AAPL had popped so suddenly at the end. I trade iron condors on AAPL but I never look at the stock action at this depth. Glad you guys are watching my back!
Anyone try putting in short sale order 5 mins before the close several dollars above current price and then buying the shares back in AH?
I'm fairly 'plain vanilla' with my trading, so I don't know if there are any retail platforms that will allow this.
Hands Up been caught with my fingers in the till; banged to rights! my brief says your up before Judge " Did not go to Cambridge the Right Dis Dishonorable send him down " Cuntis Amoris. Plead guilty and throw yourself at the mercy of the court and you'll get 3-5 or bung me $100k plead a Corzined and you might be lucky get a suspended sentence, recover your costs and an OBE.
Agree.....anyone that can buy that kind of ass just to walk on the beach is my kind of guy..........of course he's using my money but WTF he's got more free time than I do.......
He is free.
How about this (work with me).
Corzine for USDOJ AG
Oh the irony,
The whole market is nothing but fraud.
What you need to make money is insider information.
If you don't have it, you'll get fleeced.
http://www.angrysinner.blogspot.kr/2013/01/yesterday-dragon-lady-served-hormel.html
Maybe the sheep do like the sheer?
Probably some kind of dumbass trading strategy. Ignore.
Only a whale of a retard would think they could paint the tape of f***in AAPL.
Just more proof of a rigged market
Joe Terranova you sonofabitch
Ma nipple ation
See you at the party Richter!
Specific order routing for reason other than most competetive bid/offer?
Someone is trying to pull Carly Fiorina trick? She had a habit of painting the HP tape just before her stock based compensation was calculated. Can someone check when AAPL calculates the stock based options for their execs?
Yeah that is standard procedure in Australia too. Executive share plans can be constructed so that the shares to be awarded are bought on-market PLUS no shares need actually be awarded but the ramped price just used for the calculation of cash compensation. The more illiquid share the better.
There is even a euphemism for share price self manipulation, they call it 'capital management' lol
BIGGER PICTURES!!!
Maybe someone entered the wrong amount.
I doubt it. The software on most trading platforms should catch it. I think the software will look at the current market and if the market price is lower then you get the lower price.
Yeah true, but I think with some brokers/software you can skip trade confirmation, so maybe this trader was set up that way and placed a limit order, and the seller/algo raised the ask within nanoseconds to meet it?
Or Bernake is in there jacking up prices (i.e. Occam's Razor).
I hear you but the mistake happens at the very last second of the day? Joe six pack and millions of chartists will look at Apple and think today's high was $555 when it was really closer to $549 or so.
I cannot see Tyler's charts too well but it looks like volume surged too. My guess is alogos/HFT/program trading programs kicked it in. They probably kick in when volume spikes or a stick moves up a little bit. This was an almost exactly 1% "move." Only one trade but those programs are probably watching for this. They probably all bought but they got the market (lower) price.
Mission accoplished by the scum who did this. They create a fake $555 close when it was really about $549. The second objective was probably to create a volume spike at the close. Whomever did this deserves what Mussolini got.
Yeah, definitely bizarre.
I'd love to hear theories as to who is doing this (unless we all assume it's that fuckhead Bernake).
More likely that fuckhead, Tim (Cook, not that elf motherfucker).
In a normal trade, if the exchange can match you to a better price (lower buy price or higher sell price), then the trade will be done at that price.
These trades went in with a special code marking them to be executed at the specified price even if in the market there were open sell orders at a better (lower) price. I very much doubt that any mainstream trading platform would even allow you to set any such codes, since there is no reason (other than market manipulation) to purposefully execute a trade at a price worse than the best market price.
Somebody went our of their way to make sure that these buy trades were executed at a price 1% above the market.
Braeburn.
Dats a rotten apple.
Why Does Someone Keep Losing Money On AAPL In The Last Second Of Trading?
Why do fools fall in love?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q96ylFiQK_I
Rogue algo.
Easiest answer in the world: MENTALLY ILL BY CHOICE.
What is the % of americans taking legal and illegal antidepressants?
Counting biosynthesized oxytocin?
This crap has been going on for years, and if its a mistake, its a mistake oft repeated.
Hard to say who , and why, but I would not assume idiocy as the first explanation.
Well if they can make money wasting gas driving a train back and forth over the boarder for no reason, maybe the EPA has some kinda gift for influentially losing money on Apple Shares too?
I've tried to do something similar to create a technical breakout, but they would not let me pay more than the going offer price.
That is because you're not part of the club. Two sets of rules, one for the insiders and one for the hoi-poloi. Now you know which group you're in.
Free Kevin Henry!
Plunge Protection Team trying and trying to instill confidence, the harder they try the worse it gets....
Ding! Ding!
(Most likely) Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! ;-)
I know its more common in commodities, but could it be something as simple as a broker or some other similar market participant that is intentionally taking a loss to provide the party on the other end of this trade with a better than market value on the trade in order to gain their business in furture trades?
Yes, it reminds me of the so-called AA (against actuals) transaction in commodities, which is normally executed within the day's range, but there is no problem for it to be agreed outside of it (sometimes significantly) and has to be agreed upon by both parties. When it is significantly outside of the day's it is normal the exchange to start asking questions and demand proof of legitimacy from both parties involved.
"market participant that is intentionally taking a loss to provide the party on the other end of this trade with a better than market value on the trade" - the party seemingly intentionally taking a loss, is not really taking a loss cause I am sure it has some OTC arrangments in the background it is supposed to recover the loss through .
It is just a gimmick used by someone low on collateral to reduce losses (or boost profits) artifitially by transferring the loss from his trading account to another somewhat not so visible (or with delayed visibility) account of his of course with the allowance of the counterparty.
Someone wanted a trade at a price higher than the market for purposes of inflating a mark on an AAPL position.
Someone
Tax deduction, gaming the system, probably CONgressional idiots or CALPERS or other pension funds.
FINRA, they're the problem in my opinion.
Just looking at the equity action may not tell the whole story--as you suggest, a stock like AAPL clearly impacts SPX, et al. But what about the action in its options at the same time? I'm no markets expert by any means...
This is the fraud you hope it isn't...this is the farce the you feared it is...this is...well, American propaganda promoting socialist ideology by demonizing the faux enemies of the government (Wall Street, bankers, elite) while simultaneously paying all benefits of the state to this elitist group at the expense of the national interest.
Because it was legislated in the fiscal cliff bill somewhere?
Ponzi! Ponzi! Ponzi!
(have I said that yet today? Oh well)
As a 25 year vet of trading who made the 5th trade on the NQ first day,
June 1, 1999 - duh, easy one...in fact you can see it if you are an astute
tape reader - intraday..
the algos are set to a level above or below the "fair" value...
when you print AAPL outside the spread, algos jump...you can see
it cleary when AAPL is moving and the NQ is reacting tick
by tick...
so, when they print outside a real edge...
the prints outside at the close would cause the end of day push higher and the
"real order" executed at a higher price in volume...
proof of the hypothesis is the volume, not the print, correct Tyler?
G
Stay liquid my friends
Maybe they tried to knock out short mini futures on apple...
Oil jumped more than 2% in a couple of seconds on second christmas day just out of the blue when 70% of the traders where at home.
There was only a strange news item from the UEA about terorists. The same UEA that profit the most of the high oil price.
Imagine which parties make a lot of money by dumping a litle money in the oil paper market.
What is interesting is that busts occurred in Apple at all given the size of its market cap. It's also interesting that the busts occurred at NYSE-ARCA.
The SEC-CFTC report highlighted ETFs as an area for further study because more ETFs had busted trades than other stocks during the flash crash. All ETFs trade on NYSE-ARCA.
Perhaps more ETFs were broken because they trade on NYSE-ARCA and not because they were ETFs.
Inter-Market Sweep Orders (ISO) were created as an exemption to the order protection rule of Regulation NMS. An ISO is a limit order that
1. is identified as an ISO when routed to a trading center and
2. simultaneously with the routing of the limit order, one or more additional limit orders are routed to execute against all better-priced protected quotations displayed by other trading centers up to their displayed size.
All orders must be identified as ISO orders available for immediate execution. The ISO exemption was adopted to allow institutional traders to forgo the best-price requirement in order to fill large orders. In practice there's no difference in the size of orders executed using ISO and non-ISO and use of the exemption has proliferated to be the primary order-flow method for market makers and many large trading institutions. In truth, it's a loophole that allows traders to use ISO to preference their order flow as a precision instrument allowing them to limit execution to a specified market center regardless of the National Best Bid Offer. In the fragmented market structure of today it's used by market makers for bid/ask spread arbitrage, precision order placement, and directing trades to exchanges where they're reimbursed for limit orders. But ISO trades can also be used for more nefarious predatory trading tactics such as combining ISO with short selling to suck liquidity out of an illiquid/troubled market or security, or fine-tuning an attack on a known weak hand or anticipated liquidation.
Both the NASDAQ and NASDAQ-BATS declared self-help against NYSE-ARCA in the minutes preceding the flash crash. Was that the equivalent of “blood in the water” alerting predators of weakness?
Read more: http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/flash-crash-apple-cause-reasoning-wonderland/6/30/2010/id/28982#ixzz2GuLCtuT1NYSE-ARCA held the National Best Bid Offer for Apple for 25% of all trades during the 10-minute period of the flash crash but was the source for 52% of crossed trades. 100% of Apple crossed trades executed on NYSE-ARCA were ISO-exempt trades. Actually, in minute 2:46, 100% of all Apple trades executed on NYSE-ARCA were ISO-exempt trades. Were they weak-seeking guided missiles or reimbursement-seeking liquidity providers?
Keep uncovering the fraud, ZH and Nanex, we need you!
It could be tied into the daily settlement price of an OTC option or derivative which no one else sees. Take a modest loss on the stock and make a fortune on the derivative.
Any way you look at it, it's illegal. So the question shouldn't be why but how? Of course, to get an answer, the SEC must look, and that just ain't happening unless you or I did it.