This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
HFT Has Disconnected Commodities From Fundamentals
High-frequency traders have caused U.S. commodity futures prices to disconnect from market fundamentals of supply and demand since the 2008 financial crisis. An extensive and detailed analysis by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development just confirms what we have shown again and again (most recently here in Silver) that HFT's impact on the world is not all unicorn-tears and liquidity-providing. Markets are more exposed to 'sudden and sharp' corrections, and as Reuters notes "The strategy of those involved in high-frequency trading tends to reinforce the correlation between equities and commodities". In a somewhat stunning conclusion from an academic treatise, the authors find "We are not saying that it's all about speculators and (that) fundamentals don't matter. But we are saying that they tend to matter less, except in extreme cases,". Unlike other studies on the linkages, the UNCTAD study uses tick-data and finds correlations rising and trade size dropping as frequency increased dramatically since the crisis in 2008. Critically, one final consequence is that investors seeking to diversify or hedge against other investments in their portfolio are often disappointed as the increased HFT creates a destabilizing effect on commodities (increasing volatility) and can often create bubbles.
The number of Ticks (trades) has risen exponentially faster than the volume - as the black (ratio) line indicates - for WTI in this case.
And on a rolling 5-minute correlation basis - it is abundantly clear that there has been a regime shift in the relationship between US equities and WTI (in this example)...
- 13990 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -




High frequency trading should be banned , its like boting in an MMORPG.
Its high frequency money printing not high frequency trading that caused the disconnect.
I'm still on the floor that the UN actually did something I applaud.
HFT may have been used to contain commodity prices to allow the biggest financial bubble in history to be blown.
There is no question HFT can be used to distort markets - the question is how it has been increasingly used over the last 15 years.
It would be very convenient now to blame the coming hyperinflation of consumer goods prices on HFT and not the central banks who are the real culprits.
I'd hazard it didn't really get going until 2009.
That will prove exceedingly difficult since all they do is... Trade.
Clearly the creation of money via borrowing against inflated prices, and therefore the CREATION OF MONEY BY BORROWING IT INTO EXISTENCE will not escape attention.
Besides that, the world is waking up, check the attitude towards gold in the ME, India, China, etc.
Best case scenario is that the whole thing blows up spectacularly, the COMEX & LBMA implode and shut down, and the Asians create a 1:1 allocated metals market (PAGE 2.0 - Shh...).
In the meantime we need to get our energy infrastructure ready for a tremendous shock - assume 50% drop in oil imports. Now GO!
The Alaska Highway was built in 1 year. This can be done.
Although I dont necessarily disagree with their conclusions, the fact that the UN sponsored this study makes me wonder what their hidden agenda is. "The United Nations. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."
Agreed. But I do hold the possibility that there are disparate factions within the UN, perhaps a few rebels, and maybe even some good guys.
No bureaucracy is a monolith, not even North Korea.
Dont get up yet.. the devil's in the details.. you may actually be in a coma!
In fractional reserve systems, such as our own, there is no real difference.
Totally. I just realised if things went mental and WW3 kicked off these HFTs could quite probably crash markets such as Gold. Then what? I mean seriously - this is alarming.
Simple, buy the dip. Imagine a fire sale on gold.
That could also be linked to the fact that all markets have become a Beta trade courtesy of the FED no?
I want to buy and sell something 100X per second, sounds so COOL!
Or maybe just sell something I don't own 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times (x10)
"Bubbles" is Ben's middle name.
NO shit sherlock....
When there is fraud, everything disconnects from its fundamentals.
except, of course, when fraud is the fundamentals
No more Rainbow Skittles and Koolaid?
Say it ain't so...
Let the Primary dealers deal now! Congrats cocksuckers
Get over it, some have to be the suckers.
Fundamentals when out the window in 2009.
HFT is just cover. It's the Federal Reserve
Totally agree. I think the old adage "Don't hate the player, hate the game" is very apropos here. The heightened correlation is ultimately the result of Fed actions. HFT is just taking advantage of this at a faster rate. This correlation would still have increased without HFT.
Hate the Fed
hate the game
LOL- unhedging the hedge funds...... In the end, everyone will own Apple and no one will be able to sell risk because there is no risk to sell- Orwell would be so proud......
or Huxley
Is this one of those koans like what is the sound of one hand clapping? What do you mean disconnected from fundamentals? How can the market disconnect from something that doesn't exist?
When fundamentals don't matter anymore in the commodities markets, expect severe shortages of everything and soon. HFT and blatant price manipulation to the downside will turn the commodities markets in one big "Extreme case" down the line.
The public has responded to this in one of two ways. They got out of the market or they became traders themselves. The long term investor is mostly gone. This exacerbates the problem as nobody looks at fundamentals anymore. A chart is all that is needed and so when everyone is using the same text book the moves get exaggerated. Thus there is no longer a market just a continuous intervention to cause the herd to move in the desired direction.
the UNCTAD study uses tick-data and finds correlations rising and trade size dropping as frequency increased dramatically since the crisis in 2008.
Correlations have no doubt risen, but I'm not sure they can claim trade size has dropped when a gazillion one lot trades hit the tape in a split second. Methinks trade size is hidden in the flood. It is hard to imagine enough pea-shooters hitting the bid in the PM's at exactly the same instant to cause the meltdowns.
Wow, hedgies clobbering TVIX!! Selling short like there is something for free right there! A real frenzie!
Where is the 3 O clock melt up???
In TZA and FAZ
TVIX is busted, everyone's running for the door!
And then, oh miracle, CSFB issuing more shares...after arbitration gains are booked of course! :)) suckers :))
Fundamentals = my idea of what should happen.
Disconnect from fundamentals = not my idea.
Fundamentals work until they don’t.
Muppets have a new character ....the honey badger...and the honey badger don't give a shit.
Just bend over and take it. You can't fight anymore.
We are all talking about what needs to be done, but nobody can actually do it because .gov is always watching and you'll be disappeared before you can get a group large enough to have any effect.
The Glenn Beck rally on the mall scared TPTB shitless. That group of people could have changed the entire course of the world if Beck would have just stood there and said, "Hey, you know what. Let's take this country back. Everyone on the right side go take the White house, on the left side go take the Capital building."
That was the last chance. There will never be another one again without massive bloodshed.
We have our foreign born muslim clown muppet president doing the bidding of the radicals that plucked him from Indonesia and told him, "If you do what we say and what we want, we'll make you president of the United States."
Gold certainly looks disconnected vrom the bulls. Even priced in apple it's looking toped.
I now know so much less than a year ago when I started reading ZH. Another year, and I vill know notting...
So, questions:
1. Who is it, what funds/banks/brokers/ who the fuck - actually owns and runs the computers that are doing the bulk of the HFT bullshit? i.e., the Fed may run the game, but who are the players? Somebody here on ZH (probably more than one) actually know at least some. And I CAN hate both the game and the players who have corrupted price discovery, fundamental analysis, and all the rest of what was once a more or less honest and 'real' market.
OR - where could I look online for this info?
2. Who or what (and why) is screwing with palladium futures? Twice this month they have taken a ~5% hit, including today. WTF is going on here? (I suspect it is not supply and demand, but I have become a cynic in my old age...) Is this just reflecting the China slowdown, or is somebody(s) messing with the PM that don't get no respect?
I'm irritated by all this HFT shit ...
If you can store it in your closet, so can everyone else. HFT will always lose to real life supply and demand. That is why nothing they do can stop the ascent of PMs. All they can do is disconnect the paper system from reality, cause scarcity, and thereby self destruct the system. HFT manipulation is a product of worthless money. Organizations willing to take unlimited losses because they have access to printed money only to achieve a pricing illusion for political reasons can not exist if the money actually has value. Therefore, our paper money has no long term value as money, and the real market for hard money will continue to unmask it.
Take silver for example. If the smackdown last year was based on market forces, why did the supply dry up? http://www.24hgold.com/english/interactive_chart.aspx?title=COMEX%20WARE...
Fakery caused scacity.
You don't seem to get the concept of fiat. As long as they can print whatever they want, they can print whatever they want... including ETFs. Manipulating metal prices up and downwards (and especialyl doing both), will work exactly as long, as those ETFs are taken seriously (i.e. TRUSTED). As long as that is the case, PMs will move whereever CBs want them to go.... and the populace let's them go. Heck, even in complete contradiction with reality, it will work as long as people believe it.... because THAT is the currency governing every other currency: trust. Even if a populace were going right into economic hell, it could in theory stick to the fake-market.... even if it dooms them.
"Fundamentals" merely is what really is going to happen, once it becomes unavoidable. That says nothing about how people will imagine it.
TRUST. That's what it's all about. Every social and conceptual convention will rise and fall, by trust, and nothing else than trust (though, other aspects may push oneself towards mistrust).
Why so? Simple: You can in theory always lie, even in the face of your own death. Sure, lying won't avoid death, but that doesn't mean that the one dying will believe that he is dying.
Yep, i think this is the blackest post i've written so far on ZH.
It's a big boys game now. Honestly, if you can't take the heat get the hell out of the kitchen.
The markets have never made any sense, not now, and not ever. Climging a wall of worry" is the saying for a reason, someone didn't just make that up and manipulation has been a practice as long as there have been forms of trade.
It is what it is, no more, no less.
Kid, You are wrong: I have been following the market since high school - 1955; and put my first money in the game in 1962, after grad school and the Army. Once upon a time, the markets made sense, and fundamentals worked.
And - I am now a well funded retiree because of it.
In short, if you are so damn smart, howcum you ain't rich? (Maybe you are - you are anonomous).
I don't wanna bust your balls, but you are wrong here:
the markets USED TO make sense.
Fundamental analysis (fuck yer charts) made sense and made a lot of people, if not rich, well to do.
That's me - I am now playing with $ I can lose, trying to at least stay even with the HFTs, by figuring out what headlines they are reading.
Different era, different game.
Still fun to play.
Who the fuck is whining here?
Fuck you kid - you are still clueless with the 'kitchen' quote. Your reply is so sad - you have NO sense of history, and you have NO sense of the presence.
I'm not 'climging' to a damn thing - I am present, and I am still making a lot of fucking money. ($2,500 today).
One must adapt to changing circumstances = evolution!
You may be right about history, but he is right about the current.
Tell me how humans adabt to nanosecond markets.... heck, you can't even react in a timespan of 100 MILLISECONDS. And please don't tell me tactics or strategy... because that is just playing the game, in a rigged casino... of players that for PHYSICAL reasons (computers right at the exchange) always can outmaneuvre you... and that is not even taking into account, the casino possibly knowing your exact portofolio and bets AHEAD OF TIME.
How outsiders could win? Three possiblities:
- You stay below the radar, and are comfortable with being a small fish outsmarting obvious artificial midterm algos (i.e., the constant pumping and dumping of PMs, at almost exactly the same threshold levels).
- Your almost winning, but then they send the gov and police after you.... i.e. via confiscation... and you have like 10.000 buddies like you, who will resist. Yeah right.
- The elite in other ways pisses off the populace enough to revolt and NOT step down.
As you can see, besides of the "under-the-radar" approach, none of the above involves winning the market, by merely playing in it. Part of the reason for the low volume :)
Don't be lazy. If you really want to know HFT what, how and who then 'Google' or use some other search engine and then read all about it.
I used to write algos in basic on an Apple of the futures market. We just didn't have access to the circuits to front run trades in nano seconds. Just think, I could have been one of the 1% crowd if the world wasn't so cruel.
Don't be lazy?
You dumb fuck - I spend 8-10 hours day with one eye on trading screen and the other eye on economic 'news'.
Give me some REAL information that I have not found or STFU!
Inane comment - if you are so smart, why ain't you rich?
I am.
Fuck you.
I'm somewehere in the 5% - meaning I have 'enough'
Wonderful word, 'enough'.
If you truly want to be part of the 1%, one - good luck with that; two WTF is the matter with you?
Seriously - how much is enouogh?
Hey, Nobody
I asked each of my clients in 1993 the same question:
How much is enough?
Their collective answer was:
"Enough? There is no such word, om."
Pissed off, huh? I have those days om
David Morgan finally flip-flopping on the HUI after being bullish on the miners during a yearlong decline. He still thinks S&P will drop though. I wonder when he'll finally reverse on that recommendation too, 1800? Now that I'm loaded on assets that are negative and declining and even professional industry bulls won't touch with someone else's dick. I can finally claim the sceptre reserved for the world's dumbest investor. Unfortunately the scepter is the 3' razorcock from Se7en and I'll have to have it surgically detached it from my arm after I maim some hooker with it.
No guarantees but as one who has been in the gold market for the last 10 years. This is normal. The market will stop going down when the last bull gives in. Then it will base for awhile and move back up. If you look at the chart there has been a 20 - 30% correction in gold every few years during the entire bull market. It is just another buying opp in a secular bull market.
When/if silver is under $30 and gold is under $1600 I will be a buyer again. Until then I'm putting double portions of booze in my morning coffee. Did I mention I was long TVIX this morning?
I feel your pain, sweetheart.
PMs are a bitch to play, just gotta buy when you can and hold, OR get out of the damn game.
Booze is good. Long Booze.
I'm with you on silver under $30, I'm gonna stack.
But, and I'm gonna get trashed, try putting some coin in fundamental shit: to me, that is big oil = CVX, XOM.
It has made me, if not 'filthy rich' (as my dad would say); at least moderately soiled.
Check yer local gas pump next time - it is at least a way to sort of break even...
HFT will make traders and investors alike long term suckers.
Precisely why you need to get physical.
And who are those most involved in High Frequency Trading, why its all the New York Wall Street Whores, who else!!
That is a generic reply - who indeed?
TYLER - Real names. Who the FUCK is running the HFT computers?
What Funds and Banks? What per-centages?
I've been all over the web looking for REAL names - ah, kind of hard to get?
Somebody here has got to be inside a little bit.
In short - WHO THE FUCK IS PLAYING US? (Us being what is left of organic traders, and more important, US being the Americum sheeple/muppets?)
Who are you,who,who?..... Woke up in a sewer hole, with a Bernanke on my back. Jay pee morgan was tricklin down my left leg and using HFT to pound my shinny metals. I spit up my gold tooth and shout who the fuck are you.
so there is no safety when you count wealth in fiat. nothing is safe. everything is day traded and a tool for the speculators.
but if you count wealth in physical gold and silver? the only thing that matters is entry price.
do you want to game, or do you want to exit the game?
maybe if the big players had to pay per trade like the rest of us, this horseshit would stop
@ Tyler or anyone in operations:
In the old days, no matter whether it was a day trade or back office error or a simple typo, there had to be a confirmation generated and on the errors a separate confirmation cancelling and/or correcting the first confirmation. If this is still the case, then why can't the CFTC do an audit to see whether each tick represents a trade and then match up the confirmations with the trades to be certain that these are not wash trades to launder money or hide the theft from the Fed by the banks?
It has been obvious since December that the game has really changed in gold or, at least what is represented by the tick activity on netdania. If I wanted to wash money or steal from the Fed---I would certainly take advantage of these HFT trades---they are dream to steal with because no one has to report the day trades and certainly not the nanosecond trades to the CFTC. Is there a connection here?
Or am I just an old fuck who thinks he sees something that is not really there?
I'm amazed at how this 'Shock and Awe" shit is so in your face---almost like a bludgeon---and seems to say, "We're running this show assholes---so just suck it up" thanks om