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Grand Theft Market: High-Frequency Frontrunning CME Edition
One of the New Normal responses to allegations, first started here in 2009 and subsequently everywhere, that all HFT does is to frontrun traditional market players (among many other evils) now that its conventional and flawed defense that it "provides liquidity" lies dead and buried, is that "everyone does it" so you must acquit because how can you possibly prosecute a technology that accounts for over 60% of all market volume and where if you throw one person in jail you would throw everyone in jail. Today we learn that this indeed may be the case, and not only at the traditional locus of HFT frontrunning such as conventional exchanges for stocks such as the NYSE or even dark pools, but at the heart of the biggest futures exchange in the US, the CME where as the WSJ's Scott Patterson explains frontrunning by HFT algos is not only a way of life, but is perfectly accepted and even smiled upon.
Stop us when all of this sounds familiar.
High-speed traders are using a hidden facet of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's computer system to trade on the direction of the futures market before other investors get the same information.
Using powerful computers, high-speed traders are trying to profit from their ability to detect when their own orders for certain commodities are executed a fraction of a second before the rest of the market sees that data, traders say.
The advantage often is just one to 10 milliseconds, according to people familiar with the matter and trading records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. But that is plenty of time for computer-driven traders, who say they can structure their orders so that the confirmations tip which direction prices for crude oil, corn and other commodities are moving. A millisecond is one-thousandth of a second.
The ability to exploit such small time gaps raises questions about transparency and fairness amid the computer-driven, rapid-fire trading that increasingly grips Wall Street and confounds regulators.
Well, for there to be questions about "transparency" and "fairness" one's underlying assumption must be that they exist. Luckily, courtesy of 4+ years of constantly broken markets, in which regulators jawbone and talk about fixing everything any day now, but nothing ever changes, because why change - a rising manipulated tide lifts all boats (some more so than others) until it all crashes of course - nobody harbors even the faintest illusion that the stock and futures market casino is any less rigged than the shadiest Las Vegas backdoor operation.
What is more troubling is that while HFT had historically been relegated to such non-reflexive asset classes as stocks, now that it has entered the hyper-levered derivative and futures arena, all bets are off. Recall: "The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a unit of CME Group Inc., is the largest U.S. futures exchange, handling 12.5 million contracts a day on average in the first quarter, according to Sandler + O'Neill Partners L.P. High-frequency trading generated about 61% of all futures-market volume, up from 47% in 2008, according to Tabb Group."
For those who are unfamiliar with how HFT frontruns everything here is a quick breakdown:
Fast-moving traders can get a head start in looking at key information because they connect directly to the exchange's computers, giving them the data just before it reaches the so-called public tape accessible to everyone else. The exchange connections contain a host of data, of which the advance notice of trade confirmations is only a piece.
All firms that connect directly to CME's trading computers are able to get information ahead of the market when their trades are executed, firm officials say. But many companies are unaware of the advantage or choose not to use it, traders say, either because they don't have the technology to take advantage of such tiny edges or employ different investing strategies.
CME spokeswoman Anita Liskey said the exchange operator is aware of the order delays, which industry officials refer to as a "latency."
Others call it bare-faced robbery, or better yet Grand Theft Markets. And nobody cares. Actually, that's not true. Those w
While many speed advantages are well-known to market insiders, only a relatively small group of sophisticated firms appears to be aware of the CME's trade-reporting delays. The CME has told regulators that investors routinely get trade information at the same time. A March 29, 2012, CME presentation to the CFTC stated that market data "is disseminated to all participants simultaneously."
A Chicago trading firm says it recently detected delays between the time it received confirmations of trades and the time the CME published the information on multiple futures contracts covering thousands of trades. For two weeks in late December and early January, the firm detected an average delay of 2.4 milliseconds for silver futures, 4.1 milliseconds in soybean futures and 1.1 milliseconds for gold futures.
...
Sophisticated traders have been aware of CME's order-latency issue for years and have incorporated the information into their trading strategies, according to an official with Jump Trading LLC, a big Chicago high-frequency company.
Officials with Virtu Financial LLC, a high-speed trading firm in New York, view a slight head start as good for the overall market, according to a person familiar with their thinking. The person said the data helps traders who buy and sell futures contracts throughout the day manage risk and post more quotes that benefit other buyers and sellers. The person said Virtu doesn't use the information to amplify its profits by anticipating moves elsewhere in the market.
If you are not laughing hysterically here, you are not paying attention.
Proponents say eliminating the ability of parties in a trade to get information slightly in advance could lead to less-liquid markets because some firms would be inclined to trade less due to the greater risks.
Officials with Chicago-based DRW Trading Group see the data-feed lags at CME as a "fact of life," not an unfair advantage, because any firm trading in milliseconds can take advantage of it if they build their systems properly, according to a person familiar with their views.
Firms can use their early looks at CME trading data in several ways. One strategy is to post buy and sell orders a few pennies from where the market is trading and wait until one of the orders is executed. If crude oil is selling for $90 on the CME, a firm might post an order to sell one contract for $90.03 and a buy order for $89.97.
If the sell order suddenly hits, the firm's computers detect that oil prices have swung higher. Those computers can instantly buy more of the same contract before other traders are even aware of the first move.
Then of course there is cross exchange latency arbitrage, a topic we first discussed in, oh... 2009.
Firms can also capitalize on that early information by buying a related product on another exchange before other traders know of a market shift. For example, it takes about 200 microseconds for trades to get from CME's Aurora, Ill., data center to the computers of IntercontinentalExchange Inc. ICE +1.12% about 33 miles away. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.
Traders able to see market swings milliseconds before others gives them "an informational advantage," says Pete Kyle, a finance professor at the University of Maryland who is a former member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Technology Advisory Committee.
Mr. Kyle likened the activity to "a tax on other traders" because "you get all the gains from being the first guy" to trade.
The CFTC, which oversees futures exchanges such as the CME, has been ramping up oversight of high-speed trading but agency officials said the CME'S latency issue isn't currently an area of focus.
Have a problem with this latest feature of openly broken markets? Tough. Get in line. Else, just submit your order but expect to be routinely ripped off to the tune of pennies on every trade. Now multiply this by millions of times evry hour, for four years. It adds up.
No wonder it's called the wealth effect. Effect for you. Wealth for them.
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For anyone who has not seen it. This was a great description of how algo's are literally shaping the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENWVRcMGDoU
I never knew free markets meant free for some people
fonzannoon +1 thanks
And THAT concludes our morning market simulacrum. Time to head back to green.
Dr. Strangelove could do no better.
Yup down 78 on the Dow today was the buying opp today...much like yesterday. Sorry, you guys missed out again.
As for whether Virtu financial profits from all these sneaky tactics, thats easy to find out. just ask someone who used to work there and left on a bad note or check out the employees who work there and see if they are driving lamborghinis/maseratis or lexus.
as Cramer would explain...."tickling the futures".....but it's perfectly legal of course /s
we'll know the party is almost over when the first HFT company IPO is announced
Didn't they try to launch one last year only to be shorted into oblivion seconds after it went 'live'?
yep you're right...i only have algo time memory
that already happened when Getco bought Knight, thus going public via reverse merger
You know it is being smiled upon...they donate big amounts of money to Politicians....its called liquidity....
yes, by definition, to avail youself of the benefit described in the article, you had to have been providing liquidity on CME
Criminals, criminals. But then again, Eric Holder has more important things to do - like going after Obama's right hand man Corzine. Oh wait...
Yeah, Holder is having a hard time getting a lunch date with Corzine - Holder will pay with his D.O.J. credit card.
Legalized (market) theft same as it always was. The only difference between today and 20-30-50 years ago is that it now happens on a millisecond basis.
Markets don't move, they are moved. And that's the way it's always been.
The song remains the same but the guitars are bigger. And just like the speed, size and scope, so goes the collapse...
actually, I think the song is sadder, sicker and slicker. An innevitable point in limited physical resource and a bloated and corrupt system that is the farthest thing from representing it.
Thou canst serve both God and Mammon
True. But, whereas a floor trader could once only blow himself up, an algo can now potentially blow up the entire financial world. What's been lost in the shift to automation are true market makers (specialists) to maintain trade protocols in the HFT realm. We now only have predators preying on investors any and every way they can imagine without limits.
But....but....but they provide vital liquidity bro. :)
<Don't pee on me bro.>
exactly and in the meantime, they got us afraid of foreigners with fireworks
You mean the chap with the thermonuclear device under his arm?
Which just goes to show why "limited slip differential" was named "Posi traction" instead of LSD.
Just saying.
Holy Hannah! Look at Gold plummeting this A.M.!
Perchance, someone got word of something different coming from the FED?
A $30 drop in a little over an hour? Something is bubbling and roiling under the surface here.
CME president says "gold coins are good"
Therefore price goes down.
Aren't you on board with the new normal?
Buy now because the price will go down shortly.
Gold says "I spit on thee".
CME response (a portion anyway;via The Fly):
Exec summary: "Nothing to see here. Blah, blah, blah..."
A classic amoral response.
"We don't determine if the overall system is slanted towards or favors one group over another (i.e. HFT over the eTrade baby) because that is someone else's responsibility. We simply attempt to make the system even among those who actually pay our bills (i.e. HFT)."
Translation? We also dance while the music plays. Even if we are the DJ's turntable.
"instances of inconsistencies with any technology"
criminals, when caught, will often use very abstract nouns and verbs to describe their behavior, in an attempt to distance themselves
it is the chosen language of lawyers and politicans
As do those charged with policing the criminals, but who do not for various reasons........usually due to glaring conflicts of interest.....theirs vs. yours and mine.
In that TED talk link above, he mentions Spreadnetworks 825 mile fiber optic cable being laid between the NY and Chicago exchanges...several years in the works....
Vast infrastructure projects like this require an era of regulatory.....Certainty.
....all the better to eat you with my dear
These instances happen consistently, at least once a week. Orders are submitted, the CME's servers are overloaded and I receive trade confirmations milliseconds after I have submitted a modified order. They love to sweep the options about 1 millisecond before they take all of the futures for ten ticks. Definitely encourages me to trade more when i can give up a half day's work in 4 milliseconds.... HFT is great!
The fed's traders and bullion banks got all the macro data releases pre-market
I miss the days when fake orange crop reports moved markets.
Beeks!!!!
Beef Jerky Time!
Pork bellies...I have a hunch something exciting is going to happen
HFT advocates always complain how less HFT would mean lower liquidity and fewer trades, like it's a bad thing. This is like a den of car thieves complaining that bridge & highway toll revenue will drop if they aren't allowed the getaway. This is like a mass murderer complaining about how many FBI agents would be jobless without him. This is like cancer complaining about how many manufactured coffins it will no longer be able to fill. This is a plague of locusts that blots the sun advocating that they are a net global coolant.
great analogies
unfortunately, that's exactly how our medical and criminal justice systems work
Look at it as a vat tax for fat cats.
+1 for alliteration.
see algo run
run algo run
see algo jump
jump algo jump...
Break out the handcuffs and orange jumpsuits. If the legal system and the military won't perform the grand smackdown, the people will.
no they won't. the people are too concerned with Honey Boo Boo type shows. military- seriously? Legal system? not for the grand theft type entrepreners............
The People's smack down will consist of looted walmarts
grand theft, grand casino, grand marshals, grand canyons, grandchildren
none of it looks good
Now that corruption is arrogantly sticking it's middle finger up our ass on a daily basis tells me the reset button is not too too far away....absolute corruption is on parade front and center. Where, oh, where is a courageous leader to take the people by the hand and tell them the bad news and then unite them in the restructure of the brokennpieces of Amerika....personally, I hope every crooked pension fund manager get's the death penality for their sins and mismanagement.
Congress could shut down HFT in an instant - if they wanted to. Specifically, they could have special short-term tax rates, like 50% or 99%, for "assets held less than one second" or "assets held less than one microsecond." But they don't. That is not their function. Their function is to enact laws that protect the elites from those they plunder.
There goes that annoying fact. There's a lot of things Congress could do.
While I am as amenable to having Congress restrict itself to protecting life, liberty, and property as anyone, the fact remains that they enact myriads of laws that do otherwise for the bulk of we peasants, while they let the elites skate. They even exempt themselves from such things as insider trading and Obamacare. Within minutes of the Sandy Hook massacre they were talking about constraining the rights of people who had nothing to do with it, while, meanwhile, HFT has been in the news for years and they haven't lifted a finger. The conclusion is inescapable that they have zero desire to bring any consequence to those who profit from HFT (i.e. at the expense of the peasants).
Well if Congress did that someone might then suggest that its members and aides not be allowed to trade on inside information....
How much was it Hilary made on her commodity trades?
The chosen operate under different rules and different rule enforcement than the public.
If retail traders are found to be using latency arbitrage, they'll freeze your account and take all your profits.
And people are waking up to their bs...and that's why the guns have to collected...because they fear an awake public....not really complicated....it's all about survival...them vs. us
The WSJ article basically kisses the corruption tenderly by calling the traders "Speedy" as if it's cute.
"Speedy" Gonzales was a rat
Don't sully Speedy by lumping him in with the rats.
He was a mouse.
The fastest mouse in Mexico man
you're right, but I needed the analogy
Having worked on the actual trading floor at the CME and CBOT front running was going on with humans on the trading floor so this is nothing new except at least at that time it was enforced and members fined and penalized. How to do you penalize an algo, turn off it's power?
there goes that theme again. Once upon a time, we punished financial crime
entreprenership. you see an opportunity and you capitalize on it. hundreds of miserable HFT programmers work for these entrepreners who earn what they earn all due to their incredible entreprenership, foresight and calculated risk taking. did i get it right?
Flash Crash
Black Swan
Rodeo Clown
Armed Algorithms
Bitter men.
Just wait until quantum computing becomes ubiquitous, that will be the dawn of SkyNet.
All your molecular ones and zeroes will belong to us...
This is disgraceful and illegal and yet ok with this congress?
Laws exist to protect the elites from those they plunder. See above.
"Thou shallt serve no god but Molloch": http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/moloch.html
Being faster and knowing more than others is part of Capitalism. You want everybody on the same playing field? Are you a communist?
A high-tech "The Quick and the Dead"...with no Sharon Stone.
Sucks.
The example about oil makes no sense. If you sold 90.03 as in their example, that means, by definition, that the 90.01 and 90.02 levels also traded, ie they are gone. The 90.03 level could also be gone. Good luck making money by selling at 90.03 and then instantly buying 90.03 or worse......with exchange fees on both sides, makes that proposition even worse.
Further, notice how this is a problem on 1 exchange, CME. Other exchanges have upgraded their technology and virtually eliminated this problem. CME however, has lagged far behind in their technology, thus creating the discrepancy described in the article. It's odd that the article blames HFT when the real problem is that CME technology blows.
In the example a bidder offers to buy at $89.97, but the seller will take no less than $90.03. The seller won't take $90.01 or $90.02 as you suggest because the ask is $90.03, the lowest price the seller is willing to accept.
Here are the possibilities and the resulting advantaged:
The bidder finds out inventories are rising and lowers his bid to $89.95. CME sees this first and sells a contract at $90.03 knowing the price will drop. The smuck who bought the contract at $90.03 sees 10 milliseconds later the ask is now $89.95.
or as in the example:
the bidder takes the ask and pays $90.03, CME sees this 10 milliseconds before you and buys as many contracts as possible, at $87.97, in the 10 milliseconds it thats for the sale at $90.03 to be reported.
He just scalped $0.06 on every contract he was able to buy at $89.97 before the $90.03 is reported to Joe Q public. Contract prices are go up and down all day and CME can front run every trade and scalp the difference because they know the direction before anyone else.
Do that on every contract traded and you are scalping $0.0x per contract traded daily.
How many contracts are traded?
a 200,000? Then they scalp $0.0x times 200,000.
Easy money frontrunning your customers who not only pay CME a fee on every trade , but also pay the diference in the bid and ask on every contract because CME is frontrunning to buy up the contract they will sell you 10 milliseconds later and pocket the six cents and the fee.
Please correct me if I am incorrect , but I can see how this can be very profitable to get in between every contract traded on the exchange and pocket the spread plus the fee.
If the ask is 90.03....there is no offer at 89.97, you can't just decide to buy that low and arbitrarily force people to trade with you, your example makes even less sense
The point is this:
The ask is $90.03 and someone places an order at $90.03. The HFT bot sees this before the sale is posted and revealed to the public, in the 10 milliseconds time it takes the placed order to be executed, and the bot buys as many contracts as possible at $90.03 knowing the ask price is rising since someone placed an order at $90.03. The ask goes up to $90.06 and the bot sells scalping 3 cents per contract.
The reverse if someone offers a lower bid.
How fing convenient..there's always plenty of money to buy everything but what is necessary to police the biggest crooks of alll...how fing convenient!!!!!!
The unindicted co-conspirator here is named "Ben."
This is patently "transparent" to the HFT guys, and only "fair" that they benefit from their hard efforts and capitalist methods (leveraging OPM). They "built that"!
The chickens are home to roost, baby! Eat your eggs* now.
* Eggsactly(TM) -- An egg product, made by a Monsanto company
They are laughing at you all the way to the hospital.
Premiums are $5-$8 on Eagles and Maples, but generic rounds have come down quite a bit from a couple weeks ago. SDBullion's selling buffalo rounds for $1.99 overhttp://sdbullion.com/shop/silver/1oz-silver-buffalos/ and Provident is selling OPM rounds for $1.99 over
And all i got was this bloody glove?
...it doesn't even fit!