HFT Rats Find New Targets Even as They Flee Banks

By: Money_Morning

Shah Gilani writes: Rats are fleeing their listing ships.

Of course, that’s not surprising.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that high-frequency traders are leaving investment banks for hedge funds, prop trading houses and their own startups.

Oh, you didn’t realize that investment banks – in other words, too-big-to-fail banks – had high-frequency trading (HFT) desks?

Surprise, surprise, surprise. HFT isn’t the exclusive purview of specialized trading shops.

HFT is a proven money-raking machine, and today I’m going to tell you that’s why it’s part of most so-called investment banks’ trading operations…

Get Into the Game

HFT is a complicated game – um, I mean, business model.

Super-smart computer scientists design mega-fast machines that intercept trading orders from the airwaves or cable conduits. Their machines read these orders – the orders you send to your discount broker, the orders institutions send to dark pools… everybody’s orders.

And before all those orders can be brought together and matched up so a trade gets executed, HFT boys pick off the orders they want.

They also send out their own orders, billions of them every day. They don’t want these orders executed, but want other machines to see their orders and move after them, which are canceled before they can be acted on. It’s about faking out other traders’ machines to set them up to be picked off.

It’s beautiful.

What’s the endgame? Insider trading. Legalized insider trading.

These aren’t tips from an insider. It’s trading on inside data flows that aren’t protected, but sold to HFT desks to be traded against, with an advantage that only the HFT players have.

The HTF rats are leaving the TBTF banks because of the Volcker rule.

The Volcker rule, which has to be implemented by July 2015, puts an end to certain “proprietary” trading. Proprietary, or “prop,” trading is that done for the house and not on behalf of any clients.

Yes, banks trade for clients. And yes, banks are liars about trading for clients by taking the other side of their clients’ trades and not calling that what it is… prop trading.

Anyway, prop trading is going to get a closer look as we get to July 2015. European banks are looking at maybe two years before they get their own Volcker-type rules.

So, the rats are leaving their listing ships (they’re listing because their trading revenue streams are going to dry up) for swamps where they can run wild and get paid what they’re worth.

Good News, Bad News

Anything that reduces the risk TBTF banks take with depositors’ and taxpayers’ money is a good thing.

The bad news is that these same banks will just buy big brokerage operations in order to sell their order flow to the HFT players. And those players will pay them handsomely to pick off their brokerage customers. In fact, they’ll be able to pay even more to peek under skirts everywhere, because not being “banks” means they won’t be subject to having their own skirts looked up and will pay their traders whatever they’re worth.

The TBTF banks are already selling out their brokerage customers. They’re selling raw order data to HFT desks and giving their own HFT desks access to their clients’ dark pool orders. Barclays is under investigation for abusing its dark pool clients, and inquiries have been sent to Goldman Sachs, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse about how they operate their dark pools.

What does this all mean? Nothing. It’s just moving around deck chairs.

Until HFT is brought to heel, it will remain a legalized, institutionalized pick-off-the-suckers game. All the exchanges will make their profit, and so will all the trading desks.

It’s business as usual.

“The strong seem to get more, while the weak ones slave. Empty pockets don’t ever make the grade. Momma may have and Poppa may have, but God bless the child that’s got his own.”

Source : http://www.wallstreetinsightsandindictments.com/2014/08/hft-rats-find-new-targets-even-flee-banks/

Money Morning/The Money Map Report

©2014 Monument Street Publishing. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. Any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including on the world wide web), of content from this website, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Monument Street Publishing. 105 West Monument Street, Baltimore MD 21201, Email: customerservice@moneymorning.com

Disclaimer: Nothing published by Money Morning should be considered personalized investment advice. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized investent advice. We expressly forbid our writers from having a financial interest in any security recommended to our readers. All of our employees and agents must wait 24 hours after on-line publication, or after the mailing of printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended by Money Morning should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company.

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.