Nanex Research
Nanex ~ 26-Mar-2013 ~ Flash Crash Mystery Solved
Below are portions of a
comment letter submitted by R.T. Leuchtkafer to the SEC on April 16, 2010, just 3 weeks before
flash crash. The second paragraph in the excerpt
below, unknowingly describes exactly
how the flash crash was started. The letter goes
on to alert the SEC on the dangers of High Frequency
Trading (HFT) and phantom liquidity
as well as other dangers.
From
our exhaustive analysis of May 6, 2010:
- processing trillions of
exchange quote, trade and
order book records for stocks, options, and futures on
May 6th
and other trading days back to 2005 and days since then
- matching up the
actual 6,438 trades (75,000 contracts) executed by Barclays
for Waddell & Reed to the 147,577
trades executed in the CME June 2010 eMini during that time
- drawing from extensive interviews
with authors of academic and regulatory
papers on the Flash Crash
- conversations with
dozens of traders, programmers,
investigative jouralists, government officials in the U.S.
and abroad,
anonymous callers, and "people familiar with the matter" since June 2010
we zeroed in on the ignition point, or starting time of the
crash: 14:42:44. That is the moment when one or more large HFT "market makers" hit their limit
of long positions in the eMini Futures (ES.M10), and reversed out - "readjusted their position". Immediately.
That aggressive act sucked out a significant amount of liquidity and caused thousands
of trading instruments (stocks, options, indexes, futures) to reprice, which severely
overloaded all trading
systems processing market data (peak message traffic
set a record at that time, which was not
exceeded for the balance of the day). Overloaded systems caused bad, delayed, and unexpected
pricing to appear, which caused other algos and traders to stop trading, removing
any remaining liquidity.
We know the Waddell & Reed algo practically ceased trading
shortly before 14:42:44; selling a mere 1000 contracts in small lots (averaging 6 contract
per trade), all on the offer side.
No Virginia, the Barclay's algo used by Waddell & Reed
did not indiscriminately sell without regard to price: it didn't take liquidity
either. That was the work of HFT.
In short, High Frequency Trading caused the Flash Crash. Of this, we are sure.
Finally, as if the above wasn't enough damning evidence, in the paper
Moore’s Law vs. Murphy’s Law dated March 19, 2013 co-authored
by Andrei Kirilenko, the former CFTC chief economist and principal author of the final SEC
flash crash report (page 11), finally agrees:
..After buying the E-mini for about 10 minutes, high frequency traders
reached their critical inventory levels and began to quickly and aggressively unwind
their long inventory at a key moment when liquidity was sparse, adding to the downward
pressure. High frequency traders rapidly passed contracts back and forth, contributing
to the “hot potato” effect that drove up trading volume, exacerbating the situation.
Meanwhile, cross-market arbitrage trading algorithms rapidly propagated price declines
in the E-mini futures market to the markets for stock index exchange-traded funds
like the Standard & Poor’s Depository Receipts S&P 500, individual stocks,
and listed stock options. According to the interviews conducted by the SEC staff,
cross-market arbitrage firms “purchased the E-Mini and contemporaneously sold Standard
& Poor’s Depository Receipts S&P 500, baskets of individual securities,
or other equity index products.” As a result, a liquidity event in the futures market
triggered by an automated selling program cascaded into a systemic event for the
entire U.S financial market system. As the periods during which short-term liquidity
providers are willing to hold risky inventory shrink to minutes if not seconds,
Flash-Crash-type events—extreme short-term volatility combined with a rapid spike
in trading volume—can easily be generated by algorithmic trading strategies seeking
to quickly exploit temporarily favorable market conditions.
That key moment in time was 14:42:44.
Finally, we can close the books on investigating the cause of the flash crash.
Note to journalists. The HFT lobby will strongly deny their involvement and will point
to the
SEC final flash crash report which named Waddell & Reed as the
cause (W&R). Here are some key points to remember:
- W&R used Barclays to execute the algo (a fact not mentioned in any SEC report).
- The regulators first interviewed the Barclay team that executed the W&R trades
on October 14, 2010 - yet published the final flash crash report 2 weeks earlier, on October
1, 2010. Why this has never been mentioned in the media is a mystery.
- The Barclay's algo only sold at the offer, never crossing the bid-ask spread during
the crash: it was entirely passive. Passive algorithms alone cannot cause crashes.
- The Barclay's algo only sold about 1000 contracts during the entire 600 point slide
in the DJIA. It did not accelerate selling as the market began to drop. To claim
otherwise is simply untrue.
- The algo sold heavily after the eMini circuit breaker ended and the market had bottom:
a period of maximuim chaos and lack of liquidity. Yet market prices climbed.
- The SEC final flash crash report
incorrectly uses the word liquidity 249 times in 89 pages.
- Barclay's and W&R gave the actual trade executions to Nanex for analysis and
we were able to match up those trades to the CME time and sales so we have a true
and accurate picture of how the algo executed.
Nanex Research
Inquiries: pr@nanex.net