Click on this link for the video :
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-01/bats-ceo-shame-you-letting-everyone-it
Bill O’Brien couldn’t have looked worse if he tried — petulant, bitter, and obnoxious.
I’m glad that this is finally getting the airing it is due.
HFT is front-running and bid-rigging, Nothing more, nothing less.
The promised extra liquidity and depth of book we were promised hasn’t materialized and at the first sign of trouble in the “flash crash,” the HFT clowns fled the market.
All orders should remain on the tape for a minimum of 30 seconds or until filled. That’s a tax-free way to put a stop to this.
I read that some 80% of the trades are between computers. Just moving the stock price up and down. Each taking a small cut. The investors are the ones who get shafted.
It’s been rigged for YEARS. During the 2008 crisis, it was like there was a tank of money over the top of it keeping it all from imploding.
This has been the message to the big companies - get in bed with Uncle Sugar, and we’ll take care of you, if you do what we ask.
Of course its rigged. The entire MBS crisis was ENGINEEERED by PUBLIC POLICY - HOME OWNERSHIP IS A RIGHT!!
The banks said, “Fine, we’ll write the loans you’d otherwise put us in jail for making, and you let us sell them to Wall Street, who will package this reeking bag of shyte into securities, and the entire thing is subsidized by the risk market using Fannie as the underwriter.”
“Done!”, cried both sides of the aisle, and the market went to Pluto - prosperity without end.
Blackpoint used CDS’s to short the entire economy. Those got packaged up into CDO’s, and as soon as the writing was on the wall - that your $14K/year illegal alien strawberyy picker was going to default on the three $750K mortgages he was carrying, the smart money knew that there was more to be made in seeing the people holding the paper defaulted.
And that was it. For a while it looked like FedGov would find a way for the big banks to weasel on the CDS and CDO leverage, but that was a bridge too far for the market.
It still hasn’t unwound, and won’t for another 30 years or so. Next three generations are going to be big renters. Big ones.
Section Eight Nation. That’s where we are headed.
Here’s a comment from the site:
“...As far as I’m concerned high frequency trading should be banned ..The point of the markets is to facilitate investment not to act as a Casino, companies are now spending absurd amounts of money to out do one another with ridiculous technology to make “their “ trades first , that kind of behavior has no place outside of a casino....”
It’s not just the ability to place trades first. It’s knowing ahead of others what the trade will be. It’s front running and it is illegal.
When you can see the future before others in a bet, you have the inside advantage. It’s like knowing what cards the dealer is going to pull from the deck before other players know. This is all due to computer speed that is made possible by putting ultra fast servers as close to the floor trading as possible. Technically the HFT players get to peek at the answer before they place their bets.
Wall St. knows the retail investor is spent, wiped out, exhausted. But they need the retail investor to come back if they can ever kick the QE addiction of investment banks channeling QE funds to stocks. At some point the QE originated game has to end. Wall St. needs to lure retail bagholders back to their casino.
Bump for later
For those of us who are regular readers of Karl Deningers site,(market-ticker.org) it has been very well documented and laid out exactly how the HFT SCAM has been playing out and STEALING from everyone. Unfortunately KD closed his forum so you can’t go read all the previous articles on this subject. But HFT IS FRAUD AND THEFT in it’s purest form.
So if I speak 500 words per minute, my burger will be 1/2 the price of the southerner’s?
BATS Admits CEO Lied About HFT On CNBC
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-03/bats-admits-ceo-lied-about-hft-cnbc