This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Algo Activity (And Manipulation) Breaks Record On Friday's Quad Witching Debacle
Friday was an extremely volatile day with new record highs being achieved miraculously at the open only to be followed by free-fall in the market's most-loved momentum names into the close. It seems that the quad-witching was of particular interest to the algos as Nanex notes, a new record was set for most trades in a 1-second interval. What was even more unusual was the record number of 'unusual' price changes that occurred in the 3 seconds before the market opened and index futures expired. "Efficient" markets indeed...
On March 21, 2014, at 15:45:00, a new record was set for most trades in 1 second in NMS stocks (NYSE, NY-ARCA, NY-MKT and Nasdaq listed stocks and ETFs - approximately 8,000 symbols). The 3rd and 4th most active seconds were also set, at 15:50:00 and 15:55:00 respectively. The 2nd most active second was set at 10:00:00 on September 1, 2011.
1. NMS 1-second peak Trades per Second for each minute of the regular trading session (9:30 - 16:00).
Each day is drawn as a line, color-coded by age: from violet (oldest) to red (most recent). 
But that was nothing compared to the total manipulation that occurred in the few seconds before the US open and futures expiration... (via Nanex)
On March 21, 2014, a record number of stocks with unusual price changes occurred just 3 seconds before market open and the expiration of the March index futures contracts.
1. March and June Nasdaq 100 (NQ) and eMini (ES) futures contracts.
The March contracts expired at 9:30. Note the sudden jump at 9:28.

2. Zoom of Chart 1.

3. Comparing price moves in about 60 select symbols between 9:29:56 and 9:30:01

4. Charts of individual stocks (mostly Nasdaq 100) between 9:29:55.500 and 9:30:01
Note the sudden price drop between 3 and 4 seconds before market open and then a recovery about 1 second before open. The large, black-filled circle is the Nasdaq official opening price.
Here is AAPL...
all 100 additional charts can be found here...
One thing we know for sure, Virtu made money....
- 10496 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -



Don't worry, HFT's are under investigation, right?
"Fore...!"
Nope, there over investigation.
That this is legal is appalling. That some politician isn’t salivating his chops at ripping these guys a new one for voter attention is … oh right … I said politician. Never mind.
one day someone will hit the take profits button.
Imagine taking away all the HFT volume. What would be left? Awful boring watching one tick and then a horizontal line tracking across the screen for seconds, minutes or even hours before changing again.
Have a sense of adventure about this! We're setting new records on almost a daily basis (for fraud and manipulation)!
If you took algos away, the naked truth of a broken stock market would show up, And NAsdaqOmx / NYSE cant have that. Nor could the FED accept it since their price fixing would be even more apparent.
Bunch of criminals. The whole lot of them. Virtu doesn't have ANY right to suck off the Fedury and become rich with other people's money.
According to Mr. Spock, chart 4 indicates that the planet's atmosphere is too unstable for transporter use.
So that's what liquidity looks like.
Despite algo's problematic, we see S&P500 hit 2400 by year end, as we dont see any alternative to stocka.
Why isn't Eric Hunsader head of the SEC?
Because his parents were married and he now works for a living.
It will be fascinating when quantum computing is abused by the algo's.
Completely off topic, but it looks like the music at Sears/Kmart just stopped:
(Bloomberg) -- Sears Holdings Corp. has relied on controlling shareholder Edward Lampert for years to help fund its operations. Now the billionaire is cutting out a form of lending he’s provided since 2010 to the owner of its namesake retail chain and Kmart.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140324/NEWS01/140329910/eddie-l...
I was hoping he would go down with the ship.
Soooooo.....that's what "momentum buying" looks like.
The real question is why do they even bother with the stock market anymore. He's dead Jim.
Yeah they did it in Superman 3, underrated movie actually
It's also spring. Less demand.
NOW, it is not too early for a puff. Look at the pretty colors on these charts.
CNBC has an article on Wall Street ethics....good for a laugh.
What this manipulation translates to: I was short the 1890 calls on the emini es that expires on the open. The open determined by the exchange because of the manipulation was 1893 (SOQ)when the high of the day based on any quote machine was 1883. Accordingly, an option at that should have expired worthless went out at 3,93. I called the CME and they responded that it is too big of a market to be manipulated. If regulators are too lazy to investigate blatant abuse there is no hope!!!
I would be so, so mad ... I'm sorry DD
And here I thought March Madness was about college basketball.
Want to see HFT in action? Just watch the trade in SLV on days like today which was narrowly range bound. Thousands of trades occur with 0.0001-0.005 up tics and back down again on no real supply and demand. Any carbon based investor armed with a 100 share limit order will move the market miles from the present NBBO before he ever gets filled. What a joke this so-called HFT liquidity is, and these so-called efficient markets are.