HFT

And so the great chess game involving Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, Qatar, Syria, ISIS, Ukraine, natural gas and lots and lots of oil, is finally revealed.

Who could have seen that vertical USDJPY buying panic stock momo igniting move ahead of the US retail muppeteering open?

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In case you wonder who, why or what did it - perhaps this will help: how they did it before ...defendants developed a scheme by which Optiver, having accumulated a large net TAS (defined below) position, traded a significant volume of futures contracts in the opposite direction, before and during the Close

It's not because - everything is awesome again. Some are claiming ISIS rumors were responsible but the size and veolocty suggest otherwise (and insta-stop at the NYMEX close)

While the US daytime trading session has lately become a desperate attempt to expand multiples on the declining earnings of the S&P500, thanks to recurring BOJ intervention in the USDJPY, to keep the S&P above the 100 SMA at all costs including generous central banker verbal intervention then it is during the US overnight session when global deflationary reality reasserts itself with a vengeance, and sure enough at last check, the 10 Year has rallied with 10Y yield hitting 1.71% before this morning’s 4Q GDP release, as well as following the latest deflation number of -0.6% out of Europe (worse than the -0.5% expected) which was the biggest price decline on the continent since 2009.  "Treasuries remained well bid overnight due to month-end index adjustments. Some talk of a  reallocation from equities to bonds trade going through in both Asia and continuing in Europe," ED&F Man head of rates and credit trading Tom di Galoma wrote in a note to explain the latest Great Unrotation, if only until the Virtu HFT algos get the full blessing of the Fed to ramp the USDJPY, and thus the stock market.

Spy 1: You can ask about ETF. . . . E-T-F. E, exchange.
Spy 2: Yes, got it.
Spy 1: How they are used, the mechanisms of use for destabilization of the markets.
Spy 2: Aha.
Spy 1: Then you can ask them what they think about limiting the use of trading robots. . . .

The problem with all Keynesian styled philosophy is, it works well, and seems utterly brilliant on paper and in the classrooms of academia - when trouble arises its "To the text books!" for answers and BAM! – crisis solved. However in the real world it doesn't work that way. Just like war, when the battle starts, all earlier plans get thrown in the dust heap. And make no mistake, this was all started via armchair generals who believed monetary policy could be managed from within the Ivory Towers of academia and the consequences of these policies are multiplying by the day. As Mike Tyson once said so eloquently: (I’m paraphrasing) "Everybody's got a plan – till someone punches them in the face." The SNB has just landed the first blow. Now what?

The EU’s financial watchdog, the European Securities and Markets Authority, will look at whether automated trading adds fake, or ghost, liquidity to markets, said Steven Maijoor, the regulator’s chairman. “There has been a suggestion that the liquidity they are providing is not real liquidity because once you would like to go into the trade and accept an order the offer disappears,” Maijoor said in an interview in Hong Kong on Jan. 20. “We are looking now into the specific issue of what is called ghost liquidity.”

for years the big money managers stoically took it on the chin, and whether out of lazyness or some other unexplained motive, allowed their orders to continue being HFT-frontrun on public exchanges and 3rd party dark pools year after year, making VWAP and TWAP orders a cost center, boosting the case that HFTs aren't really bad for stocks. Until now. According to the WSJ, some of America's largest mutual funds and asset managers led by Fidelity Investments "are close to launching a private trading venue designed to let them buy and sell large blocks of stock without the involvement of Wall Street firms and high-speed traders, according to people familiar with the matter." The new venture is the who's who of traditional asset management and includes nine firms, including BlackRock Inc., Bank of New York Mellon Corp. , J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and T. Rowe Price Group Inc., who are saying goodbye to "lit" markets, i.e. public exchanges, "and forming a company that will operate a their own "dark pool”...

Reuters just reported that none other than the HFT's bestest buddy exchange, BATS, which earlier this week was slapped with the biggest monetary penalty ever for continuing the practice of Hide Not Slide (at least until UBS' dark pool was slapped with an even bigger fine for conducting subpennying without informing most of its clients), is about to buy the FX trading platform of KCG, formerly Knight Capital which too blew up after one of its algos went haywire and blew up the firm in milliseconds.

• BATS GLOBAL MARKETS IN TALKS TO BUY FX TRADING PLATFORM HOTSPOT FROM KCG HOLDINGS KCG.N FOR NEARLY $400 MLN - SOURCES KCG.N - RTRS

Which, of course, is great news for all those who have stepped back from the rigged circus and merely enjoy "markets" for the comedic farce they have become

Just yesterday, the SEC charged Canadian Aleksandr Milrud with orchestrating a lucrative market manipulation scheme that relied on "layering" in which a trader places orders solely to trick others into buying or selling at artificially inflated or depressed prices... So we found it ironic that twice today, Nanex exposed examples of the "spoofing" manipulation in crude oil futures (which soared) and S&P 500 e-mini futures (which soared)... These are your "most liquid and transparent capital markets in the world."

Yesterday was a bad day for the HFT lobby, after not one but two incidents which exposed the high frequency parasites doing what they do best, and perhaps only: rigging markets.  And since it would be laughable if its wan't tragic, we decided to make it even more laughable, by noting that none other than intellectual titan in the House of Representatives, Maxine Waters, had a few choice words to say about the latest HFT rigging busts. That's right: Maxine Waters now opines on market microstructure issues.

A week ago, we were surprised to learn that one of the most prominent critics of HFT, Joseph Stiglitz, had been barred from an SEC Panel that will "advise regulators on issues facing U.S. equity markets."  Today, a day after the SEC busted DirectEdge for failing to "accurately describe the order types being used on the exchanges" namely the infamous Hide not Slide, even after said order had repeatedly made the front page of the WSJ, the SEC finally announced the full list of members of the "New Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee" which will focus on the structure and operations of the U.S. equities markets. Alas most of the committee members are, sadly, placeholding figureheads. Because there is only one person on the list whose participation matters, and whose presence is not at all surprising...

Why does one believe the word “catastrophe” was used by The Fed's Charlie Evans? Hmmmmm? After all, the very articulated and polished minutes of what members expressed to one another as to set the current policy was just made public. We thought the verbiage of choice was now “patient.” Unless... You know you’ve either lost, or in the process, of losing control of the markets ear. In our opinion, this is an unveiled showing of possible outright panic developing behind the proverbial curtain.

Introduce a regulation over here, an unintended consequence pops up over there. Then there are more regulations to deal with the unintended consequences. Regulations have added 100 times the volatility to one of the most liquid and ordinary derivatives in the world - the plain-vanilla EFP. Less liquidity, more volatility - welcome to 2015.