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Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

nanex.net

21–30 of 291 posts

Re: Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

#21

Every sell is someone else's buy, and every buy is someone else's trade. If you saw a bunch of activity happening milliseconds before it should, why would you be the other party to someone you suspect is committing fraud? You will be the primary victim of the fraud.

Wouldn't the other party just be open orders?

Re: Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

#22
post #5

Or someone got the report a few hours early, didn't want to be seen to jump the gun (insider trading, and all that) and kicked off a new trading strategy 400ms earlier than they intended...

and of course that also is only possible, when they know the exact time of when the news would go out. So that, they can time their activity just milliseconds before that, using tech.

Well it seems to be known that the report is due for 10.30am, so it is possible. Just an additional possibility, though nanex are far more experienced in explaining odd activity in the markets than I am :)

Re: Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

#23
post #9
post #2

After seeing some of their posts earlier and comparing it to live data I record at the colocations, I've concluded that they have clock issues which makes these types of anomalies appear frequently. Or they have a bad data vendor. Interestingly enough, even the regulators don't have good (only millisecond-resolution) trade data.

These are charted with CQS (official) timestamps. Try again.

CQS has had issues in the past. You should know this.

More importantly, why wouldn't you invest in colocations and collect the data yourself using direct feeds (with GPS clock synchronization etc to validate the data)?

Re: Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

#24
So, that initial downwards spike at -400ms that immediately kicks back up to the halfway point?

Those can only possibly be pre-programmed strategies. From the big boys. 'Cos you can't stack 'em exchange side last I checked, if they're price dependent. Which means they have a gloriously low-latency-close-to-the-exchange-link.

Which means this news was leaked well before the event.

Re: Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

#25
post #11

Since it takes a while to digest the report after having seen it, chances are that they were in possession of the report far earlier than T-400ms but waited until they were in a time window where they knew the regulators would not come after them. This is how fortunes are made. By taking advantage of loopholes in the regulatory mechanism.

but why a spike at T=0 then?

Re: Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

#26
post #5

Or someone got the report a few hours early, didn't want to be seen to jump the gun (insider trading, and all that) and kicked off a new trading strategy 400ms earlier than they intended...

Yeah. This. Just posted the same, didn't see yours. It's a classic straddle, going by the quick buy by the same points to the midway.

Re: Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

#27
post #23
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are charted with CQS (official) timestamps. Try again.

CQS has had issues in the past. You should know this. More importantly, why wouldn't you invest in colocations and collect the data yourself using direct feeds (with GPS clock synchronization etc to validate the data)?

We do. You are grossly misinformed. The charts correctly show the sequence and times of this event. I'm not going to engage this discussion further, though pmail is fine.

Re: Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

#28
post #3

If we can't solve this problem, with the rise of machine driven microtrading, is there really any reason to place any faith in the stock market as a private investor?

We could significantly alleviate the problem by limiting by law the trading frequency. Traders ultimately depend on the law to recognize the validity of their transactions. There is no value to society in high frequency trading. Mandating a full second in a market that operated quite well when slow-reacting humans conducted all the transactions should be more than sufficient.

Re: Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

#29

Every sell is someone else's buy, and every buy is someone else's trade. If you saw a bunch of activity happening milliseconds before it should, why would you be the other party to someone you suspect is committing fraud? You will be the primary victim of the fraud.

If you saw a bunch of activity happening milliseconds before it should, why would you be the other party to someone you suspect is committing fraud? If no such report had come out milliseconds later, the activity wouldn't be suspect. How could a person (or in this case, given the timeframe, an algorithm) possibly distinguish this spike from a 'legitimate' spike? It doesn't make sense to blame the victim of a fraud wh…

I presume the report didn't just randomly come out at some random time. That is, everyone knew exactly when it was going to come out.

Re: Someone got the natural gas report 400 ms early

#30

Every sell is someone else's buy, and every buy is someone else's trade. If you saw a bunch of activity happening milliseconds before it should, why would you be the other party to someone you suspect is committing fraud? You will be the primary victim of the fraud.

Are you saying that, after reading the natural gas report and having hours to digest it, you could make a better decision of where to hedge your position / whether to place buy/sell orders, than by simply knowing when the report was to come out, and anticipating a storm of activity immediately preceeding it?

If the time that the report was due out was not known in advance, I could see this being suspicious. But just finding a flurry of activity at a time when you judge that it might have been prudent to wait and read the news first, that is not any evidence of illegal activity or fraud.

It is evidence that these day traders are getting more confident in the ability of their robots. That is true.

Rule # Evleventy Billion Six Hundred Thirty Eight: Look around the room and try to spot the sucker. If you can't find him...

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