Program Trading

Being bullish on the market in the short term is fine... The expansion of the Fed's balance sheet will continue to push stocks higher as long as no other crisis presents itself. However, the problem is that a crisis, which is 'always' unexpected, inevitably will trigger a reversion back to the fundamentals. The market will eventually correct as it always does - it is part of the market cycle. The reality is that the stock market is extremely vulnerable to a sharp correction. Currently, complacency is near record levels and no one sees a severe market retracement as a possibility. The common belief is that there is 'no bubble' in assets and the Federal Reserve has everything under control.

The current belief is that rising interest rates are a sign that the economy is improving as activity is pushing borrowing rates higher.  In turn, as investors, this bodes well for corporate profitability which supports the current valuations of stocks in the market.  While this seems completely logical the question is whether, or not, this is really the case? Increases in interest rates slow economic activity, with a lag effect, which negatively impacts earnings, margins and forward guidance.  Ultimately, and it may take several quarters to manifest itself fully, the fundamental deterioration leads to a reversion in stock market prices which, ironically, will then lead to the next decline in rates.

While there was little macro news to report overnight, the most notable development was yet another USDJPY-driven crash in the Nikkei 225 which plunged by a whopping 576 points, or 4%, to 13825, while the Yen soared to under 96.80 in the longest series of gains since mid-June before recouping some of the losses on pre-US open program trading. The reason attributed for the move were reports that Japan would adhere to pledge to cut its deficit which is the last thing the market wanted to hear, as it realizes that boundless QE is only possible in a context of near-infinite deficit spending.  The index, which has now become a volatility joke and woe to anyone whose "wealth effect" is linked to its stability, pushed not only China's Shanghai composite lower by 0.7% but led to losses across the board and as of this moment is seen dragging US equity futures lower for the third day in a row.

The late 20th century was a jam-packed time for stock-market crashes that would change, shape and alter our lives in so many ways.

"I am going to hit on some of the landmines that you can encounter within order-matching engines, and then I am going to give a forecast on, at least from my perspective, what’s going to happen over the course of 2013"

So, apparently, according to Jon Hilsenrath, "QE to Infinity" is actually "finite" after all. There is no doubt that the Federal Reserve will do everything in its power to try and "talk" the markets down and "signal" policy changes well in advance of actual action.  However, that is unlikely to matter.  The problem with the financial markets today is the speed at which things occur.   High frequency trading, algorithmic programs, program trading combined with market participant's "herd mentality" is not influenced by actions but rather by perception. As stated above, with margin debt at historically high levels when the "herd" begins to turn it will not be a slow and methodical process but rather a stampede with little regard to valuation or fundamental measures. The reality is that the stock market is extremely vulnerable to a sharp correction.   Currently, complacency is near record levels and no one sees a severe market retracement as a possibility.  The common belief is that there is "no bubble" in assets and the Federal Reserve has everything under control. Of course, that is what we heard at the peak of the markets in 2000 and 2008 just before the "race for the door." This time will be no different.

In money management long term success lies not in garnering short term returns but avoiding the pitfalls that lead to large losses of invested capital.  While it is not popular in the media to point out the headwinds that face investors in the months ahead - it is also naive to only focus on the positives.  While it is true that markets rise more often than not, unfortunately, it is when markets don't that investors are critically set back from their long term goals.  It is not just the loss of capital that is devastating to the compounding effect of returns but, more importantly, it is the loss of "time" which is truly limited and never recoverable. Therefore, as we look forward into 2013, we want to review three reasons to be bullish about investing in the months to come but also review three risks that could derail the markets along the way. The reality is that no one knows for sure where the markets will end this year; and while it is true that "bull markets are more fun than bear markets" the damage to investment portfolios by not managing the risks can be catastrophic.

In the aftermath of Knight's crushing algo-driven error and subsequent cash loss, which may well prove terminal for the business - an artifact of a broken market we have been warning and writing about since 2009 - we present some informative insights into the various eras of Wall Street trading errors courtesy of that grizzled trading veteran, the Chairman of the Fermentation Committee, Art Cashin.

Too Big Leads To Destruction of the Rule of Law

In addition to having said many things about HFT in general in the last year, over the past 12 months Zero Hedge has focused a lot of attention specifically on Goldman's dominance of the NYSE's Program Trading platform, where in addition to recent entrant GETCO, it has been to date an explicit monopolist of the so-called Supplementary Liquidity Provider program, a role which affords the company greater liquidity rebates for, well providing liquidity (more on this below), and generating who knows what other possible front market-looking, flow-prop integration (presumably legal) benefits. Yesterday, Goldman's SLP function was non-existent. One wonders - was the Goldman SLP team in fact liquidity taking, or to put it bluntly, among the main reasons for the market collapse. We are confident the SEC will aggressively pursue this line of questioning as they attempt to justify their $1 billion porn download budget. We are also confident, that should the SEC truly take its role of protectors of investor interest seriously for once, it will uncover such criminality and corruption at the level of trading integration of open exchange and ATS venues (and the "but it's so complicated - let's just leave it untouched because nobody understands it" excuse is not flying any more), that it will make Goldman's CDO criminal and civil case seems like a dimestore misdemeanor. We have written about 1,000 posts about this. Readers are welcome to go back through our archives and acquaint themselves with the NYSE's SLP program, with Goldman's domination of program trading, with Goldman's domination of dark trading venues via the Sigma X suite, with Goldman's domination of flow trading via Redi X, and with Goldman's domination of virtually every vertical of the capital markets, which would be terrific if monopolies were encouraged in the US. Alas (last time we checked with the DOJ), they are not. Which is why we ask, for the n^th time, when will the anti-trust division of the DOJ finally dismantle the biggest market monopolist in the history of capital markets.

Program trading as a percentage of total NYSE volume exploded last week with quadruple-witching. Index Arbitrage activity across the 20 most active member firms increased 1,190% ... with RBC and JP Morgan accounting for 53.55% of all reporting member firm activity. Crossing Session II volumes jumped 146% ... with Barclays, Goldman and Morgan Stanley accounting for 91.61% of all reporting member firm activity. Principal activity rose 71.39%, from just over a billion shares traded to 1.7619 billion ... with significantly escalated volumes for everyone but Goldman.

It has been a while since we revisited Goldman's domination of NYSE program trading courtesy of the SLP. For the past two months we have been waiting for additional information from the NYSE on what other firms are currently SLP vendors to the exchange. By the lack of any data from the NYSE we can only assume that Goldman is still the defacto monopolist in SLP, and in essence the primary privileged DMM on the NYSE. One wonders with liquidity "back to normal" when the NYSE, SEC and Goldman will agree to disassemble the SLP program so that the market can go back to its efficient old-school ways (this is rhetorical). As the data suggests, Goldman Sachs & Co. now has a staggering 22-to-1 ratio of principal to agency transactions: in the last week Goldman traded 662million shares in principal capacity (instead of blaming all of this on Goldman's prop trading cash machine, we would love to be able to break down how much of this is attributable to SLP, but a reborn NYSE which believes in nothing but transparency will simply not provide that data). Taking into account GSEC adds another measly 10 million agency shares doesn't change the big picture that out of the top 10 NYSE firms, Goldman trades the third lowest amount on an agency basis. Goldman's casino is now not even pretending to trade on behalf of clients, as all of its money is made on FICC spreads and volumes (aka trading monopoly).

Goldman Sachs Electronic Trading's own George Sofianos (ironically caught here providing advice on shortfall costs for limit orders) providing his objective view on PT and volatility from the days when he was merely a member of the largely unaffiliated New York Stock Exchange.

Some more insight from Themis Trading's Joe Saluzzi from a video clip with BNN earlier today. Also follows up on his earlier post about program trading in the context of AIG. The part about algorithms looking for bonuses and Lexuses is amusing but morbidly troubling.

It is now generally understood that high frequency traders (HFTs) are dominating the equity market, generating as much as 70% of the volume.

HFTs are computerized trading programs that make money two ways, in general. They offer bids in such a way so as to make tiny amounts of money from per share liquidity rebates provided by the exchanges. Or they make tiny per share long or short profits. While this might sound like small change, HFTs collectively execute billions of shares a day, making it an extremely profitable business.

Why should institutional or retail investors care? After all, aren’t HFTs adding liquidity? That’s what they and the exchanges, who court their business, say.

There’s a lot to worry about.