HFT

“Do not involve Sales in anyway [sic] whatsoever.  In fact avoid mentioning the existence of the whole BATS Last Look functionality.  If you get enquiries just obfuscate and stonewall.... for the future, sales absolutely 100% do not know about the existence of last look and it shouldn’t be a concern for them...  IF any client does call up about a rejected trade . . . it is important that you state in any communication ‘THE TRADE WAS REJECTED BECAUSE OF LATENCY.’ . . . DO NOT talk about P&L on trades."

Last night, after Japan's quintuple recession, we had a simple question: "How is the BOJ not buying every USDJPY on this ridiculous news?" We only had a to wait a few hours...

The institutional academic system is broken. We need less systemic, traditional education that only provides knowledge of low utility and more alternative education that provides the right high-utility knowledge to thrive during today's global currency wars.

Below is a "help wanted" ad for a "trader" by the infamous 3Red "spoofing" outfit.  We put trader in quotation marks because... well, just read the ad and you will see.

As DB so well-puts it, "Welcome to random number generator day also known as US payrolls." Consensus expects 185k jobs to have been added in October but it’s fair to say that the whisper number has edged up this week with slightly firmer US data. It is also fair to say that even if one knew the number beforehand, it would be impossible to know how the market will react.

• BOE Stays Cautious on Rate-Hike Timing as Inflation Outlook Cut (BBG)
• China Enters Bull Market (WSJ)
• Britain says Islamic State likely brought down Russian plane (Reuters)
• Dollar jumps as markets fix on December rate expectations (Reuters)
• Activist Investor Bill Ackman Plays Defense (WSJ)
• BOJ Survey Data Reveals Signs of Growing Inequality in Japan (BBG)
• UAW Warns of General Motors Strike If Workers Fail to Approve Contract (WSJ)

the case really boiled down to just one thing: not whether it is legal to spoof, which it is and yet massive, well-connected HFT firms get away with it every single day, but whether it is legal to take advantage of HFT algos programmed to do just one thing - frontrun orders, and activity which leads to massive losses for the algos and the Citadels behind them, when the spoofer realizes just how dumb his counterparty truly is. The verdict was clear: nobody is allowed to outspoof the spoofers.

While FX volatility, and frontrunning mammoth central bank orders was clearly profitable to Virtu, many were wondering how would the recently public company return to its roots of making the most money in equities. Earlier today, when Virtu released its earnings we got the answer: as the chart below shows, while the market was plunging in the third quarter, Virtu was making off like a bandit, with revenue from American Equities soaring by 68% to $46 million in the quarter - the highest quarterly revenue in that category Virtu has generated in history!

... for many equities are simply, as SocGen puts it, "too scary."

So far today's trading session has been a repeat of what happened overnight on Monday, when following a weak start on even more weak Chinese data, US equities soared on the first trading day of the month continuing their blistering surge since that dreadful September payrolls report, which as we showed was mostly catalyzed by a near record bout of short's being squeezed and covering, which accelerated just as the S&P broke the 2100 level.

As the crackdown against Zexi was taking place, Shanghai police also arrested 3 suspects as they cracked a case of stock futures price manipulation involving over 11.3 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion), police said yesterday in a statement. According to Shanghai Daily, Yishidun, a commercial company registered in Jiangsu Province’s Zhangjiagang City in 2012, was found to use an illegal stock futures trading software to destabilize the market and profit from volatility.

"Investors are now facing the second most extreme episode of equity market overvaluation in U.S. history (current valuations on similar measures already exceed those of 1929). The belief that zero interest rates offer no alternative but to accept risk in stocks is valid only if one believes that stocks cannot experience profoundly negative returns. We know precisely how similar valuation extremes have worked out for investors over the completion of the market cycle, and those outcomes have never been deferred indefinitely. The only question at present is how many grains are left in the hourglass."

Eurodollar curve captures the mechanics of Fed expectations in a simple way. Away from the very front end, the curve dynamics is displays a rather rigid structure where a single risk premium parameter explains bulk of the spreads movement in different sectors of the curve. Typically, in anticipation of Fed hikes or cuts, the market makes up its mind about the terminal Fed funds (Greens) and begins to price in the rates path around that. The more aggressive the initial hikes are, the less they will have to do later

Another day, another "crackdown" by the CFTC on an "evil spoofing mastermind."

The world sits at a very precarious point once again in time. There is a very real possibility, as well as an ever-increasing chance one wrong unintended or misunderstood event could trigger an all out war of global proportions. For the matter at hand, the players involved, the possibilities of doing just the slightest of wrong moves whether intentional or not, at precisely the wrong time; has the inherent risk of triggering world events in ways and at magnitudes not seen since WW2. And if you think that’s hyperbole – you’ve just not been paying attention.