Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/30/2011 19:48 -0400
* Central Banks
* Chicago PMI
* High Frequency Trading
* New York Stock Exchange
* Volatility
In another case of purely coincidental serendipity, three days ago Zero Hedge informed readers that the "NYSE Boerse [sic] has just announced its purchase of Kingsbury International Ltd., which surveys managers for the Chicago Business Barometer, also known as the company that hosts the Chicago PMI data, in order to bring PMI data direct to feed subscribers. Net result: expect even more market volatility at each PMI release, now that the market is not two but three-tiered, and consisting of regular HFTs, HFTs with access to the Deutsche Boerse feed, and everyone else." We concluded: "It is unclear if the ultra-speed, HFT friendly feed would be activated before its next release on June 30. That said, we will certainly coordinate with our friends at Nanex for any trading abnormalities, primarily in the critical ES futures, this Thursday at 9:42am, keeping a close eye on the tape, and indicating precisely when the tiered data release hits." Well, as promised here is the Nanex data. As expected, it's a stunner.
The shocker, however, resides not in the stock arena, but in what is now becoming the go to place for bulk frontrunning high frequency trading algorithms to chase what little volatility is left in the equity market: options, which, as previously noted, we now are confident will be the cause for the next big market wipe out.
Per Nanex:
Approximately 1/2 second before the 9:42 release of the Chicago PMI report, the option market exploded setting new records in quote rates, saturation, and delays. We have not yet determined why the equity market did not see a record explosion of quote traffic; rather it experienced the normal saturation/delay that happens all too frequently every trading day.
The electronic S&P 500 futures experienced a withdrawal of liquidity beginning about a minute before the release of the PMI number. At approximately 9:41:59.550, 1275 contracts cleared through 4 levels of the offer side of the order book. This coincided with the explosion in OPRA quote traffic.
The first image shows quote message rates for each of the 12 CQS data lines that carry data for NYSE, AMEX, and ARCA equities and ETFs in 2ms intervals. Notice how quickly activity drops after the peak compared to the OPRA images below it. Normally, options activity follows equity activity very closely.
The images that follow, show each of the 48 lines individually along with the total, so that you can clearly see the saturation events and estimate the duration and extent of the
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/caught-act-hft-option-algos-observed-frontrunning-todays-pmi-release?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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