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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMysterious Algorithm Was 4% of Trading Activity Last Week
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49333454<snip>
single mysterious computer program that placed orders and then subsequently canceled them made up 4 percent of all quote traffic in the U.S. stock market last week, according to the top tracker of high-frequency trading activity. The motive of the algorithm is still unclear.
The program placed orders in 25-millisecond bursts involving about 500 stocks, according to Nanex, a market data firm. The algorithm never executed a single trade, and it abruptly ended at about 10:30 a.m. ET Friday.
Just goes to show you how just one person can have such an outsized impact on the market, said Eric Hunsader, head of Nanex and the No. 1 detector of trading anomalies watching Wall Street today. Exchanges are just not monitoring it.
Hunsaders sonar picked up that this was a single high-frequency trader after seeing the programs pattern (200 fake quotes, then 400, then 1,000) repeated over and over. Also, it was being routed from the same place, the Nasdaq [COMP 3065.02 -47.33 (-1.52%) ].
Translation: The ultimate goal of many of these programs is to gum up the system so it slows down the quote feed to others and allows the computer traders (with their co-located servers at the exchanges) to gain a money-making arbitrage opportunity.
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Are they trying to fuck up the stock market for the election?
hunter
(38,313 posts)Put a slight tax on these transactions and they'll go away.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)The market is double what it was when Obama took over the shrub's disaster. Anything they can do to show a drop will give the rMoney campaign an advantage, and you know damn well the 1% is short-selling with full knowledge of what's going on.
Sounds to me like someone was doing some type of testing and was pointing at the real stock market databases instead of at their test environment... I've done that a few times From the regular/repeated increments, I would guess some type of load balancing.
surrealAmerican
(11,361 posts)Either the program did what it was written to do, or this was a bug.
TroglodyteScholar
(5,477 posts)They are trying to fuck up the stock market for profit.
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)this morning at 10:46 am edt and lasted till 11:00 am. involved 146 stocks. Announced on BTV at noon eastern. Can you see why Europe is doing a transaction tax,just to counter this shit.