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Head Trader Of World's 4th Largest Hedge Fund Caught In HFT Frontrunning Scandal
Shortly after we reported the latest market-rigging scandal, in which ITG was busted for frontrunning sellside clients in its dark pool in what has been since dubbed a "trading experiment" (because it sounds better than criminal conspiracy to defraud clients), and which will cost the company a record for a private Wall Street firm $22 million settlement, we had one question for AQR's Cliff Asness yesterday morning:
Hi @Cimmerian999, is Hitesh Mittal the AQR employee who was formerly at ITG and is part of the SEC settlement?
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 30, 2015
Here is a quick bio of Hitesh from FX Week:
Hitesh is the head of AQR's Global Trading Strategies group, running the firm's trading desk and overseeing the group that builds automated trading models and does transaction cost analysis for equities, futures and FX globally. Prior to AQR, he was the global head of liquidity management at Investment Technology Group, where he built its algorithmic trading platform and managed its crossing network, POSIT. He has published several papers on market structure, algorithmic trading, dark pools and transaction cost analysis, and is listed as a co-inventor on three patents. Hitesh earned a B.Eng. in computer science and engineering from JNV University in Jodhpur, India, and an M.B.A. from New York University.
We got no answer from the AQR head, who we assumes failed to noticed our inquiry, despite his notorious chattiness on Twitter where he regularly enjoys berating and mocking HFT critics.
Luckily, Bloomberg noticed, and as it turns out the answer to our question was a resounding yes.
As a reminder, the SEC accused ITG of two gross violations:
The investigation is focused on customer disclosures, Form ATS regulatory filings and customer information controls relating to the pilot’s trading activity, which included (a) crossing against sell-side clients in POSIT and (b) violations of ITG policy and procedures by a former employee. These violations principally involved information breaches for a period of several months in 2010 regarding sell-side parent orders flowing into ITG’s algorithms and executions by all customers in non-POSIT markets that were not otherwise available to ITG clients.
As ITG CEO Bob Gasser noted, "The problematic behavior was led by a senior employee who operated in a manner that violated ITG policy, Gasser said Thursday, without identifying the former worker."
In short, the "former employee" was frontrunning external orders in ITG's own prop-trading dark pool/HFT pod.
Previously, ITG Chief Executive Officer Bob Gasser made several references Thursday to a former employee he didn’t identify who was purportedly involved in the case. While apologizing during the conference call with analysts, the CEO highlighted the actions of the former employee, who Gasser said was “ultimately severed from the company.”
That former employee is precisely the Hitesh Mittal we inquired about: it turns out he quietly quit ITG by July in what Traders Magazine article reported then was a "cost-cutting measure." It now appears that he had merely been busted for engaging in what the SEC now confirms was illegal activity (and if ITG was hiding his criminal behavior it would explain why Kevin O'Hara, a former SEC enforcer, demonstratively quit the ITG board the same day).
But it's not what he did there that is notable. It's where he went after - the place: the world's 4th biggest hedge fund, AQR Capital with $136 billion in AUM, run by the outspoken Cliff Asness, who just happens to be one of the biggest supporters of HFT there is.
From Bloomberg:
Hitesh Mittal, the head of trading at AQR Capital Management, is voluntarily taking a leave of absence amid a regulatory investigation of his former employer, Investment Technology Group Inc.... Although ITG didn’t identify anyone involved by name, Mittal is a key figure in that inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the investigation is private.
AQR was quick to distance itself from Mittal's allegedly criminal client frontrunning while at ITG:
“This investigation relates to alleged misconduct that occurred in 2010 and 2011 while Mr. Mittal was employed at his former employer, ITG,” according to a statement from Edelman’s Mike Geller, a spokesman for AQR, which oversees about $136 billion of assets. “Mr. Mittal subsequently joined AQR in 2012 and we had no knowledge of the issues in question. Mr. Mittal is taking a temporary paid leave from AQR while the firm diligently reviews the issues.”
Great job on the background check there guys. And while AQR will surely deny, deny, deny it knew anything about Mittal's prior trading record, and will certainly deny he was hired to implement a comparable strategy at AQR, he will no longer be in charge of trading over $100 billion in assets, most likely permanently:
During Mittal’s leave, AQR principal Brian Hurst “will assume the management of the firm’s trading operations,” Geller said. “AQR has an exceptional trading team with a deep bench of talent.” Mittal didn’t respond to requests for comment.
And lest anyone gets the impression we are talking some tiny boiler room whose "principals" spend their time on CNBC every day instead of actually managing money, as a reminder, this is where AQR falls among the world's largest hedge funds according to the latest Institutional Investor AUM ranking: at #4!
So was the world's 4th largest hedge fund using an alleged frontrunning criminal as its head trader for 3 years? We won't know until the SEC investigation is complete. That said, rereading Cliff Asness's Op-Ed "Why I Love High-Speed Trading", with all of this latest information certainly leads us to believe that he may not have listed all the reasons why he loves HFT.
What we do know, is that AQR Capital will want to update Item 11 "Disclosure Information" of its Form ADV in the coming days.
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Hitesh is the head of AQR's Global Trading Strategies group, running the firm's trading desk and overseeing the group that builds automated trading models and does transaction cost analysis for equities, futures and FX globally. Prior to AQR, he was the global head of liquidity management at Investment Technology Group, where he built its algorithmic trading platform and managed its crossing network, POSIT. He has published several papers on market structure, algorithmic trading, dark pools and transaction cost analysis, and is listed as a co-inventor on three patents. Hitesh earned a B.Eng. in computer science and engineering from JNV University in Jodhpur, India, and an M.B.A. from New York University.
I thought they caught the guy that "did it" the last time.
Free Corzine!
... yeah, they caught someone prior ... but this is the "head" trader ... and he has dirty knees ...
The great Indian take down by wall street and preet bharara, ironically of Indian Descent, continues unabated....
How come shit like DTCC gets to evade the lens? FOr DECADES.....
Strange, even this guy is crooked, the NUMBers seem witch-hunty...
The great Indian takedown? Is that where they teach your people self-loathing via every avenue of media and import Muslims and/or Catholics into your country en masse to partake of the handouts you are forced to give?
Say what?
Your thoughtstream there has neither context, nor clarity and definitely NO point.
It's amusing to watch the ZH readership rant about high frequency trading without any understanding of how it works and why it is so important for our markets. Newsflash: over 50% of equity trading is high frequency, and our markets depend on this liquidity in order to function efficiently. HFT is the why we can now get instant quotes for thousands of securities in our trading accounts. And it's not only investors traders who benefit from HFT - more efficient markets mean that everyone gets cheaper, higher quality goods and services. High frequency trading is one of the major sources of growth for our economy, and it's disturbing that ZHers actually want to shut it down!
Not being anglo nor a member of alpha kappa krappa, he has no free pass from regulators :(
Mmmm mmmm mmmm, trading while brown. Didn't anyone send this idiot the memo. If you're brown, you're going down. Dumb bastard thought himself a Yid?
"we had one question for AQR's Cliff Asness"
Hey, is that your real name, Cliff Assness? Like in your Ass hangs over a Cliff?
Look they caught another Nottajew.
pods
Wait till they find out his mother's cousin's friend's uncle was half Russian.
Preach it brother! Anyone who is opposed to HFT is a financial terrorist and should be arrested.
That liquidity is one sided. It won't be there when the shit hits the fan.
You tell'em MDB. Hell we didn't even have markets, or liquidity prior to computers, and look how robust volume is, and how "fair' the markets are perceived to be by mom & pop.
Maybe if we put a 1/1000th of a penny tax per transaction we could demonstrate how valuable HFT really is. We should all embrace being front run as efficiently as possible.
+1 for embracing the APT (Automated Payment Transaction) tax.
You're confusing liquidity with trading volume, Million Dollar Baby.....
I thought number 1 was Yellen Criminal Associates?
Oh, sorry. It looked to me like you were whining over the mistreatment of your people as they go about reverse-colonizing the first world.
... ORI ... perhaps he never gives to the democRats nor republiCan'ts' campaign wishes ... they'll take him down ... he's no Corzine ... ;)
FINALLY - some banksters get jail in Ireland. I am smiling!
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/muffled-sobs-pierce-court-as...
Different basement in a different parents house....
Hey Indian, somebaaaaarrdy's gonna get 'a hurt reallll bad!
Hey fellas, did you see that Mick Fanning got close and personal with a shark the other day? They say that sharks don't bite when there is copious amounts of shit in the water.
Blew a hole in his wettie.
Theory proved.
Oh noes
You know what they say on Wall Street, "If it's brown, flush it down."
Not tonight honey, I have a Hitesh ache...
HE LOOKS SO CLEAN AND HONEST.
So in other words, not Jewish!
Well at least he has the opportunity to go to jail. Unlike the Jewish individuals that are thrown ( I mean jump ) off of buildings or get nail gunned to death.
If your not in the club no matter who you are. YOU ARE FUCKED.
I think you meant to say, escape (flee) to their other passported country.
Remember, 3 can keep a secret if the other 2 are dead. Sometimes it's not who you know, but what you know. Act accordingly!
Here's the list:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/12/is_someone_targeting_the_wor...
Hey, they caught another brown skinned guy.
Every jew is needed to pray to Satan.
At the border? No fucking way!
When the going gets tough, throw a few token Indians to the wolves to demonstrate that Wall Street will not tolerate corruption. Unlike China, which has no Indians to sacrifice.
So this time it wasn't some nobody operating out of his parent's basement? We're making progress!
An Air India plane was forced to return to New Delhi two hours into a flight to Milan on Friday after a "suspected rat sighting" in the cabin.
http://news.yahoo.com/air-india-plane-forced-turn-back-rat-sighting-0023...
You mean Corzine was on that plane?
Hillary, get back up on your seat!
Stop kicking the back of my airplane seat, you obnoxious Hillary bitch.
As if Killary would fly commercial...
That's right up there with Kim Kardashians cat wearing a pink ribbon today. I'm guessing it'll be blue tomorrow.
Our rats don't want competition, but we don't have enough illegals.
Making money the old-fashioned way.
THose fucking Indians. The dot kind, not the feather kind.
When we should be hanging the tribe members, not the feather kind or the dot kind.
But ...but Tom Brady's redskin shot that lyin in Africa is the headline story on the 6 o clock news...RAYCISM!!!
11pm news....if their mother was a central banker ..they didnt do it.
RIPS
which will cost the company a record for a private Wall Street firm $22 million settlement,
This is just the government's latest go-to funding source ... having exhausted ability to increase tariffs, stolen land sales, fees, taxes, inflation, fines, interest collections, and inflation. Now they look the other way while laws are obviously being broken ... wack down taking 10% of ill-gotten-gains ... repeat.
Coming to a theater near you ... retirement plan bail-ins.
Buy lead, brass, and saltpeter.
Oh look another non tribe member caught cheating but never one of the shysters is discovered.
l'll hazard a guess that all 100 of the Top 100 hedge funds own a Hitesh Mittal trading patsy.
Is this the new "Guess the race!?"
The ones being prosecuted are all the same race.....goy!
Another one thrown under the tank. They all look the same to the Tribe.
Not color blind __ er ya?
At least he didn't take the leap - at least not yet.
Just like Hillary and Louis Lerner, I didn't know you had to uncheck the OS logging system box to prevent exposure to my criminal activities. Fuck you IRS and Hillary. You're busted.
I wont get in trouble for layering. Im just keeping the market honest
How about a minimum 20 years in prison?
And of course you mean for Mr. Mittal. I agree totally. But if there was any real interest in stopping this type of criminality (grand larceny), every single human being in the chain of command in that corporation who holds a position above this "employee" should get life with no chance of parole. If the SEC wants to send a message, let's get fucking serious. But alas... the SEC doesn't particularly give a rat's ass about justice. The criminal Goldman Sachs pays them far too well NOT TO slap wrists too hard.
How about a minimum 20 years in prison?
Sooooo....actually put criminals in jail....that might just work.
Now that's just craaaaazy talk!
wow lucky it wasn't Goldman, Virtu, Citidel, Bridgewater, Blackrock, Renaissance or any other Democrat donor company. If only they had donated to Hillary....they could have had a V8
It would be RACIST to charge him with anything just as it would be ANTI-SEMITIC to charge the bankers with anything. Only you sick white Nazi goyim scum can be criminals due to disparate impact. We need to elect a strong cuckservative, like Jeb Bush, to continue the great reforms that President Barack Hussein Obama has started. Donald Trump is an unelectable NAZI with no experience.
JEB BUSH 2016! I'm PUMPED!
Is that Giorgio A. Tsoukalos (ancient aliens guy) with a haircut?
"...and we had no knowledge of the issues in question. Mr. Mittal is taking a temporary paid leave from AQR while..."
Are you kidding me? The "issues in question" were EXACTLY WHY AQR hired him! He was a proven commodity.
That means he will be promoted to the FOMC team in the future
Shocked that there is gambling going on in here shocked I tell you .
This HFT "genius" (i use the term lightly) couldn't trade to save his life. He's a criminal wannabe trader ripping his clients off. Frontrunning is illegal so lock him up and lets move on. It doesn't matter if he physically used a mouse to click the orders or he told a program to enter the orders, it is still illegal and a person(s) is behind the action.
If you want to see justice in action, have the court tell him to really trade for a few hours in front of the jury, if he makes money then he's legit, if not then he goes to jail for the rest of his life. He probably wouldn't even try and would put his hands behind his back for the handcuffs.
Looks like Haji is in a bit of trouble.
Another brown skin perp. What a coincidence. Fat chance there are any waspy traders from Darien pulling this shit.
Be good to the Whites. Except for the ones that steal from us.
I see a lot of bashing going on here. Apparently this guy was the Head Trader at one time. No doubt, a very skilled trader in the markets. He will pay a price for a long time - for this bad judgment.
YOU have to really ask yourself ... what are things coming to - when the Head Trader needs to resort to front-running his own clients? Do the math. The firm must be in pretty bad shape for this kind of stuff to be going on. A lot of stress, markets that are very unpredicatable, normal trades broken. The "look behind the scenes" would probably say a lot .. about what's really going on inside trading houses these days.
slap on the wrist, and back to business as usual.
Hey wait. This Indian guy isn't in his underwear. We're getting serious now about stopping corruption.
I see more of these arrests increasing that is a good thing. Yes, such need jail time.
The greatest loss to society is not financial but brain-drain. Mathematcian, physicists and engineers are sucked into Wall Street and turn into greedy jerks who use their talents to scalp people.
Zero's article states, "What we do know, is that AQR Capital will want to update Item 11 'Disclosure Information' of its Form ADV in the coming days."
Full disclosure - I've been a compliance "geek" for 2 1/2 decades.
Did Mittal's prior firm terminate him for "cause" despite the allegations of violating internal policies and the firm's regulatory issues? NO! Not even an amended U5 claiming any kind of investigation was pending, etc. (post termination filing).
Mittal's record shows ZERO Form U5 terminations for cause....despite his history.
Mittal's record shows ZERO disciplinary/disclosure history. He has a sparkling clean U4 registration record.
This is one of the many huge issues with this industry (particularly on the brokerage side). Failure to report / disclose. I wonder what kind of deal was made there - clean U5 for keeping his mouth shut perhaps?
. . . a Voluntary leave of absence . . .
Anyone on here would talking via our Lawyer from the Slammer.
SEC Scum
Looks like he held a position on the bumper during the collision.
see, i told you it is the damn dot heads who are responsible for all the market corruption.
Cimmerian999 ?
I'm no sure I want to entrust my life savings to someone who takes Conan the Barbarian (the original Cimmerian) as his role model.
Somehow I think my Fritos corn chips will be turned into his Fritos corn chips, regardless of any controlling legal authority.
Crom will eat your corn chips mortal!
Bernie Sanders has been promoting the Financial Transaction Tax intended to hit HFT for years and to use the proceeds for rebuilding the infrastructure and addressing education costs. He also has exposed the top graft/cronyism beneficiaries of the Ex/Im Bank (led by Boeing and GE - both now making threats to off-shore jobs if it is not extended).
The man does stand for some valuable things - unlike Hillary for example.
This guy must be one of those Top Traders Mr. Ritchie was talking about.
Here's an Executive Summary that should cover quite a bit and fit on one PowerPoint slide
1 You're going to lose it all.
2 You can't front run anything currently unless you are allowed to do so.
3 I previous proved this 2 ways:
3A. - Cited an interview from a now deleted post of
a failed Hedge Fund Founder.
- His sophisticated front-running should have
worked but failed.
- He detailed on 1 flow chart exactly how and
why he was doomed from the start.
3B. - 1 previous post of mine provided 1 small
detail of how the whole system works.
- It included an over-simplified practical
application to change the current system.
4 You can't play in a crooked game run by the house and ever expect to outwit, outplay or outlast. There will be no survivors.
5 There is a solution that can be all-inclusive with the right visionaries, leadership, team and dedication to implement it.
6 This solution will be extremely complex and require diverse resources in order to succeed.
7 When investing in the current market remember: "A sparrow (Asset) in thy hand is better than a thousand sparrows (HFT's) flying" - 6th century BC Proverbs of Ahiqar
_________________________________________
NOTE: There are many levels of knowledge, understanding and commitment everywhere. So from my perspective there should be no discrimination or favoritism shown towards any individual, family, group, team, organization etc. that is willing to do their best to contribute to a successful financial outcome that will include everyone.
I have received a number of generous employment contract offers to work exclusively with various organizations in the past. However, because of my work schedule and family priorities these have equally been rejected. The organizations and resources that will work together and assist in making charitable contributions towards a timely, smooth and peaceful financial transition will have the benefit of my first consideration for any future employment contract offers. And for those of you that already have and will continue to contribute towards this end your efforts are duly noted and greatly appreciated by me and my family.
yea i bet alot of these funds are more or less bankrupt or seriously drawn down
Holder wants his cut. Fuck you, pay me.
From India with Love
Corruption