High Frequency Trading High Volume Flash Trades During Market Volatility ALERT!

Date: 8/10/2011

Learn how to trade against "high frequency trading" and understand how it creates huge moves for bulls and bears in recent market volatility. High frequency trading (HFT) is the use of sophisticated technological tools to trade securities like stocks or options, and is typically characterized by several distinguishing features.

By 2010 High Frequency Trading accounted for over 70% of equity trades taking place in the US and was rapidly growing in popularity in Europe and Asia. Aiming to capture just a fraction of a penny per share or currency unit on every trade, high-frequency traders move in and out of such short-term positions several times each day. Yesterday, after the FOMC Meeting, we saw "flash traders" move in and took the Dow Jones down 200 points before switching and ripping the markets 643 points off the lows.

Today, we saw flash traders come back into the markets and sellers took the markets down 437.6 points very quickly. There has been critisim regarding the SEC and their lack of enforcement in regulating these trades. We've seen flash trades creating latency issues in the trades and even the fastest computers are getting delayed data because these trades are hitting the tape extremely fast. In the early 2000s, high-frequency trading still accounted for less than 10% of equity orders, but this proportion was soon to begin rapid growth. According to data from the NYSE, High Frequency Trading grew by about 164% between 2005 and 2009.

By value, HFT was estimated in 2010 by consultancy Tabb Group to make up 56% of equity trades in the US and 38% in Europe. Many high frequency firms are market makers and provide liquidity to the market, which has lowered volatility and helped narrow Bid-offer spreads making trading and investing cheaper for other market participants.

The speeds of computer connections, measured in milliseconds or microseconds, have become important. More fully automated markets such as NASDAQ, Direct Edge, and BATS, in the US, have gained market share from less automated markets such as the NYSE. Economies of scale in electronic trading have contributed to lowering commissions and trade processing fees, and contributed to international mergers and consolidation of financial exchanges.

The brief but dramatic stock market crash of May 6, 2010 was originally alleged to be caused by high-frequency trading. High-frequency trading has been the subject of intense public focus since regulators claimed these practices as contributing to volatility on May 6, 2010, popularly known as the 2010 Flash Crash, a United States stock market crash on May 6, 2010 in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged to its largest intraday point loss, but not percentage loss in history, only to recover much of those losses within minutes.

Another area of controversy, related to SEC and CFTC findings in its joint report on the Flash Crash that equity market "market makers and other liquidity providers widened their quote spreads, others reduced offered liquidity, and a significant number withdrew completely from the markets" during the Flash Crash is whether high-frequency market makers should be subject to regulations that would require them to stay active in volatile markets.

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