Who's buying stocks? Why is market so high? Maybe it has something to do with the increase of high frequency trading.Official SEC tallies of exchange volumes has high frequency trading making up 70% of daily volume.This is by definition not investment funds. The HFT computers parse pennies millions of times to front run other computers doing HFT front running etc ad naseum. But there is another player. It's is the human day trader. He or she add another layer of high speed trading done the old fashion way. I.E. They do it by hand. In the news today, the SEC fined Peter Beck and his associate Charles Kim $250,000 each for failure to supervise their 5000 traders that work at Swift Trade which is based in Toronto. The fine was failure to stop their stable of traders who range from Romania to New York from entering into conspiracies to "layer trades". Simply "layering" is an euphemism for "front running" . They collude to manipulate stocks . Swift Trade isn't the only day trading firm.So the 5000 day trders at Swift are multiplied by many more counterparts around the globe. The volume that all of them generate must make up a significant prtion of the 30% that computers don't do on a daily basis.
Could the extended levels of the Dow Jones and the S&P be the outcome of manipulation by here today gone tomorrow day traders?
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