High Frequency Trading

H/t reader M.G.:

“The Stock Market is Rigged in favor of High Frequency trades” says an article on Reuters. No kidding.
The article says better than half of all transactions are now HFT…..actually, it is 85%. I call it skim and sell.

– U.S. stock markets are rigged, says author Michael Lewis (Reuters, March 31, 2014)

– “The Market Is Rigged” – Michael Lewis Explains How HFTs “Screw” Investors Every Day (ZeroHedge, March 31, 2014):

It was almost excatly five years ago to the day, on April 10, 2009, that Zero Hedge – widely mocked at the time by “experts” – began its crusade against HFT and the perils of algorithmic trading (which of course were validated a year later with the Flash Crash). In the interim period we wrote hundreds if not thousands of articles discussing and explaining the pernicious, parasitic and destabilizing role HFT plays in modern market topology, and how with every passing day, markets are becoming increasingly more brittle, illiquid and, in one word, broken. Or, as Michael Lewis put it most succinctly, “rigged.” With Lewis’ appearance last night on 60 Minutes to promote his book Flash Boys, and to finally expose the HFT scourge for all to see, we consider our crusade against HFT finished. At this point it is up to the general population to decide if this season’s participants on Dancing with the Stars or the fate of Honet Boo Boo is more important than having fair and unrigged markets (obviously, we know the answer).

For those who missed it, here is the full video again.

And broken down by segment: in the clip below, Lewis explains how an extra millisecond allows high-frequency traders to exploit computerized trading in the U.S. stock market. By “beating” investors to exchanges, Lewis argues that high-frequency traders can buy stocks and quickly sell them back at higher prices.

Read more‘The Market Is Rigged’ – Michael Lewis Explains How HFTs ‘Screw’ Investors Every Day

– Stock Market Fragility Fast Approaching “Flash Crash” Levels (ZeroHedge, Oct 21, 2012):

This past Friday, on the 25th anniversary of Black Monday, Bill Gross warned that in the current centrally-planned market “central bank puts” are the modern day equivalent of “portfolio insurance”, and he is right. By sending complacency to record levels, and essentially forcing investors to no longer worry, hedge and generally ignore tail risk, the central planners, in their futile attempts to reflate stocks at all costs, are guaranteeing that the market will experience just the type of fat tail event they promise will never occur. As for the catalyst that will make sure of it is none other than our old friend: high frequency trading. Because while central planning is the mechanism by which investing is dragged away from mean reversion, price clearing and fair value discovery, it is HFT that is Bernanke’s analogue in the millisecond trading world (as all those who had stop limit orders (that did not get DKed) on May 6, 2010 very well remember). Because when the next Black ___day does happen, it will be due to central planning, but it will be enacted courtesy of HFT (which will never go away until the next and probably final market crash: too much exchange revenue depends on the perpetuation of this parasitic liquidity drain).

Which is why it is only appropriate to warn readers that when it comes to system market fragility, at least according to Nanex, whose work ZH first presented nearly two years ago and has since gone mainstream now that HFT is the universal scapegoat of even such legacy media venues as CNBC (it is always better to bash the vacuum tubes than the people who profit, or those who have made a mockery of the stock market – it is not like anything will change anyway), the frequency and magnitude of “wild price spike” events (to put it simply) are now both rising at an exponential rate, and fast approaching Flash Crash levels.

Read moreStock Market Fragility Fast Approaching ‘Flash Crash’ Levels