Market Manipulation

While reading Advanced Trading today we stumbled across the following curious excerpt:

Advanced Trading: You mentioned regulators and politicians are ignorant ...

[ITG's Jamie] Selway: I would say that their knowledge is incomplete.

Advanced Trading: Is this causing HFT to be scape-goated?

[ITG'S Jamie] Selway: Yes, there's a mixture of that. I am fond of saying I am not a huge regulations guy but I am a fan of regulations at an appropriate level that boosts confidence. I for one would prefer to be regulated by the SEC and not by ZeroHedge. So we have a team of experts and multiple agencies that are expert in regulations and know the markets and have the resources.

Here is our response.

It appears that while we were busy over the past month spreading the Greek pre- and post-bankruptcy balance sheet, and otherwise torturing Excel (something we urge other financial journalists to try once in a while - go ahead, it doesn't bite. In fact, it is almost as friendly as your favorite Powerpoint) our peer at such reputable financial publications as Forbes, and many others, were laying of carbon-based reporters and replacing them with... robots. As Mediabistro reports, "Forbes has joined a group of 30 publishers using Narrative Science software to write computer-generated stories. Here’s more about the program, used in one corner of Forbes‘ website: "“Narrative Science has developed a technology solution that creates rich narrative content from data. Narratives are seamlessly created from structured data sources and can be fully customized to fit a customer’s voice, style and tone. Stories are created in multiple formats, including long form stories, headlines, Tweets and industry reports with graphical visualizations.”" In other words, with well over 70% of stock trading now done by robots, we have gotten to a point where robots write headlines and stories read, reacted to and traded by robots. Surely, what can possibly go wrong. And here we were this morning, wondering why the market is not only broken but plain dumb.

The USS Europa Discorida story just gets more and more surreal.

• ITALY PROSECUTORS WIDEN RATINGS AGENCY PROBE TO FITCH, UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR MARKET ABUSE, INSIDER TRADING - INVESTIGATIVE SOURCE
• ITALY FINANCE POLICE SEARCHING FITCH OFFICE IN MILAN, ANSA SAYS

S&P maybe? Sure. But piss off the French rating agency? As if anyone even trades in collusion with the completely unmoving announcements by the most irrelevant of the NRSROs? This is just the definition of irrational Italian scapegoating which will do nothing to help Italy-French relations, but at least it will provide "justification" for Fitch's evil downgrade when it comes - after all it was obviously in retaliation for the Italian police just doing its job. Finally, how long would an Egan-Jones office in Milan stand before it was burned to the ground: 1 week? 1 day? 1 hour?

I believe the translators at CNBC quoted Ms. Lagarde as saying "BUYBUYBUY!" 

The CDS index market remains one of the most liquid sources of hedges and positioning available (despite occasional waxing and waning in volumes) and is often used by us as indications of relative flows and sophisticated investor risk appetite. However, as Kamakura Corporation has so diligently quantified, the broad CDS market (specifically including single-names) remains massively concentrated. This concentration, evidenced by the Honolulu-based credit guru's findings that three institutions: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citibank National Association, have market shares in excess of 19% each has shown little to no reduction (i.e. the market remains as closed as ever) and they warn that this dramatically increases the probability of collusion and monopoly pricing power. We have long argued that the CDS market is valuable (and outright bans are non-sensical and will end badly) as it offers a more liquid (than bonds) market to express a view or more simply hedge efficiently. However, we do feel strongly that CDS (indices especially) should be exchange traded (more straightforward than ever given standardization, electronic trading increases, and clearing) and perhaps Kamakura's work here will be enough to force regulators and the DoJ to finally turn over the rock (as they did in Libor and Muni markets) and do what should have been done in late 2008 when the banks had little to no chips to bargain with on keeping their high margin CDS trading desks in house (though the exchanges would also obviously have to step up to the plate unlike in 2008).

We did a double take when we read the following lead sentence from a just released Bloomberg report on what is about to take place in China: "China’s stocks regulator will “actively” push pension and housing funds to begin investing in capital markets, and encourage long-term investors such as insurers and corporate pension plans to buy more shares." To paraphrase Lewis Black - we will repeat this, because it bears repeating - "China’s stocks regulator will “actively” push pension and housing funds to begin investing in capital markets, and encourage long-term investors such as insurers and corporate pension plans to buy more shares." And that is the last ditch effort one does when one has no choice but to push "long-term investors" into the last giant ponzi. Of course, this being China, "long-term investors" means anyone at all, and "pushing" ultimately involves either 9MM or a 0.44 caliber. And what was said earlier about mocking mainstream media spin - well, the first opportunity presents itself a few short hours later - when Bloomberg, the same agency that wrote the above report, tells us that "Asian Shares Rise Amid Global Economic Optimism." Odd - no mention of the fact that China is now pushing habitual gamblers, which over there is another name for "investors" into what is openly an invitation (at gunpoint nonetheless) into the latest and greatest bubble. That said, we give this latest artificial attempt to boost stocks a half life of several days max before the SHCOMP plunges to new lows for the year.

Evidence of bear raids causing the Crisis in 2007?

Whether it is due to the general investing public finally realizing that the market is neither fair nor efficient, that the scales are tipped against the common man from the moment the 'Buy' (or, more rarely, 'Short') button is pressed, or that as the past two years have shown the market is dominated by insider trading, "expert networks" and big legacy investors surviving only due to the government's intervention on their behalf at critical times, is unknown, but Finra is now officially and finally drowning in a barrage of complaints about market manipulation. And to be sure such glaring reminders as 30 year-old UBS traders being singlehandedly responsible (of course, nobody noticed anything over the months and months of creeping illegal trades) for massive cumulative losses that amount to more than the entire net income for the bank (an odd and convenient scapegoat that), will surely not make Finra's life any easier. As Reuters reports: "A Wall Street regulator said industry complaints about market manipulation and trade reporting have spiked this year, raising questions about the adequacy of banks' internal controls over their traders. FINRA has received complaints this year about banks' audit systems, canceled orders, and brokers misrepresenting whether orders were on behalf of customers. "These are areas that for a long time we were not receiving complaints in, and all of a sudden this past year it's really spiked up," DeMaio, senior vice president in FINRA's market regulation unit, told a FIA options industry conference." That's great: so US investors can sleep soundly knowing full well fiascoes such as UBS' Delta One implosion will be confined to the UK (where, incidentally, the director of market at the local regulator, FSA, just resigned - it is unclear if he will follow a recent previous FSA departure straight into the willing clutches of such a non-market manipulative entity as JP Morgan), and that manipulation is being rooted out in the US at its core at a brisk pace.

Now that we can directly monitor the amount of quote stuffing in the NYSE courtesy of Nanex (an ability that the SEC apparently never will have), we know that every time there is a massive spike in hollow trade (as in without intentions to cross bids or asks, something everyone but the SEC and the HFT lobby believes should be a felony offense), the market is programmed to either rip of plunge. Sure enough, at just after 3:19 pm we saw an epic spike in empty packets on the NYSE, which set off red flags and immediately prompted us to observe the move in ES, which naturally confirmed that an HFT driven coordinated buy order (no block) was going through and pushing the ES well on its way to VWAP. Market manipulation no longer needs anything more than a coordinated packet stuffing dump, as what happened on May 19. Keep in mind: these work on both the upside and the downside- the reason why suddenly everyone hates HFT after loving it for over 2 years, is that while it provides volumeless levitation, it just as easily can serve as quicksand in a downmarket. That, however, does not make it right, and just as two years ago, when we first brought attention to the matter, so today, we claim that HFT should be abolished immediately by the imposition of a minimum active quote latency. That would eliminate all quote stuffing in a millisecond.

After pillaging the G Fund and Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund (CSRDF), aka the Government retirement funds, Tim Geithner was just forced to resort to the final debt ceiling extension measure: suspending reinvestment in the Exchange Stabilization Fund, better known as the mechanism by which the Treasury manipulates the stock, bond and FX markets, often times indirectly (thank you Brian Sack and Citadel fat pipe) and on occasion with CIA assistance. What this means is that FX vol will likely hit unseen levels in the next several weeks as the Treasury's manipulative ways are strongly curtailed.

Despite empirical evidence that someone big stepped an and bought the bejeezus out of Italian bonds yesterday ahead of the Bill auction, and despite Willem Buiter's warning that tomorrow's critical BTP auction will fail absent ECB intervention, some of our transatlantic colleagues were panning long-winded essays that it is supremely irrational for the ECB to even think it can control the Italian bond market because of X, Y and Z. We, on the other contend, that precisely because it is supremely irrational is why the ECB will do it. And now we have evidence that if nothing else (and we will know for sure next week if the ECB bought the bonds after the weekly SMP details are released over the weekend, as else it would show that the PBOC is actively buying Italy bonds in the secondary market). And in the absence of actual buying, yoday we get another view at just how the ECB thinks it can manipulate markets. From Dow Jones: "Moody's junking Ireland is of particular concern "as many market participants have more hope for the Irish recovery story relative to Greece and Portugal," says ING rates strategist Padhraic Garvey. "Moody's have a different view." Garvey also says that the ECB asked for prices of sovereign bonds Tuesday but "there was no evidence that the ECB actually bought peripheral paper." Translation- the ECB sends out a OWIC (Offers Wanted in Competition), and dealers are supposed to soil themselves knowing full well that even if Trichet does or does not bid, other dealers may. Game theory 101.

Yesterday, just after 8 pm Eastern we presented a very curious move in NatGas trading on the NYMEX when under very light volume, the NG performed something akin to a sine wave expansion, with about 12 peaks and troughs with ever increasing amplitude, until ultimately it triggered a major sell off when it appeared to touch off an avalanche of limit orders about 3% from the prevailing price, leading to an almost instantaneous 8% drop in Natgas which was promptly recovered. We dubbed this a fractal pattern, and after a follow up with the trade forensics experts at Nanex, it appears this was a very spot on designation, as zooming into the pattern indicates increasing levels of self-similarity and complexity. Yet aesthetic observations aside, this latest algo appears to be nothing more than a limit order-busting market manipulation device, whose sole purpose is to destabilize and generate volatility for the creator of the algo. Curiously, as Nanex indicates, the algo is not limited to Natgas but also appears to recur in other far more liquid instruments, such as the SPY, when a comparable fractal pattern was observed in broad daylight. As to how the algo itself profits from the price instability it generates: we are unsure. One could certainly trade the increased volatility through derivatives, by buying vol cheap in advance of such as limit order triggered waterfall, especially in very thin markets, and then selling the vol at the apex of a given move. Obviously, this is merely speculation. That said, we are dead certain Finra and the SEC are promptly pursuing the trader responsible for this glaring attempt at market manipulation in order to find out precisely how one profits from such fractal algorithms.

Summary: Right now there is a war in Gold options. It is between the May 1520 longs, who most likely are unhedged, and their short option counterparts, who most likely are hedged. One would think the longs intend to sell futures at some point, perhaps 1520, perhaps 1540 we do not know. It is also possible that they intend to take delivery, but that is unknowable for the moment. The shorts are probably delta hedgers and have no desire to see this market go above 1520, much less move at all.

Exactly a year ago, Zero Hedge penned "The Client Always Comes First At Goldman... Except When He Doesn't, Which Is Also Always" which was a review of Goldman's mark manipulation practices particularly as pertains to the OTC domain (read CDS) by going through self-evaluation reviews of the 4 key Goldman trades involved in the Abacus scandal (we would call it crime, but remember: Goldman neither admitted nor denied guilt). As a reminder, in April 2010 we said: "The line penned by Michael, who incidentally was the least like of the
three Goldman SPG MDs testifying on Tuesday based on peer feedback, that
broke our collective heart is the following: "Once the stress in the
mortgage market started filtering into the cash market, I spent numerous
hours on conference calls with clients discussing valuation
methodologies for GS issued transactions in the subprime and second lien
space [redacted] is prime example). I said "no" to clients who demanded that GS should "support the GSAMP" program as clients tried to gain leverage over us. Those were unpopular decisions but they saved the firm hundreds of millions of dollars." Alas, we find that all of Goldman's sincere hypocritical lies before the Senate committee were... precisely just that." This post was followed up by "Goldman Implicated In CDS Price Manipulation Scandal" which essentially recapitulated all the salient points from the first time. Today, with about a full year delay, Bloomberg's Christine Harper and Joshua Gallu realize that there was more than meets the eye to these very disingenuous revalations of impropriety by the very traders who were conducting them, and finally bring much needed broader attention to the matter in "Goldman Traders Attempted to Manipulate Market in 2007, Senate Report Says." Frankly, it's about time.

The story of Fairfax Financial vs almost every single US-based hedge fund is nothing new. The company has long been embroiled in litigation against a bevy of hedge funds, including SAC Capital, Exis Capital, Third Point, Kynikos, and Institutional Credit Partners, contending that ever since the start of 2002 it was the repeated target of bear raids, which involved not just a cabal of bearish hedge fund managers who would allegedly (although we now have evidence) spread rumors, innuendos, and outright lies about the company in the hope of bringing the price down (whether through naked shorts or otherwise is irrelevant), but also sellside research analysts, and of course media lackeys, willing to pander to the hedge fund "masters of the universe" in hopes of the occasional bone thrown their way. The reason Zero Hedge had largely ignored this story over the years is that its narrative truly reads like something out of a conspiracy theorist's wet dream: the allegations previously presented by the mainstream media implied such a level of collective deviousness and manipulation, that it would bring about the immediate ridicule of anyone who dared to bring them up in polite society. This is no longer case.