the finance industry / wall street

xp it's more that HFTs are usually independent shops, not megabanks that are seen as an essential part of our financial system.

Wow- that excerpt! Amusing article on pre-emptive Wall Street reaction:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6f514f02-b684-11e3-b230-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2xZcciV1c

Matt Levine lays out the contrarian case:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-31/michael-lewis-doesn-t-like-high-frequency-traders

After reading both the Lewis article and the "counterpoint" I'm still not sure I understand whether HFT is actually driving up the costs for the end buyers and sellers or just capturing a little of the spread that previously would have been taken by ordinary traders.

There may be HFTs doing genuine market-making, which arguably could benefit other market participants, but in the more clearly abusive cases, such as "slow market arbitrage", it's hard to argue that they're benefiting anyone other than themselves, IMO. They seem to drive up prices mainly for large institutional buyers who face the problem of executing large orders that can't be filled all at once. The impact is probably less for individual traders, except indirectly through mutual funds and such.

So this might sound a little stupid because I don't think I fully understand spreads and market-making, but here's where I'm confused. I get the general idea of how they're front-running the order: institutional investor wants to by 100K shares of ACME, and in order to purchase that kind of volume they buy on several different exchanges. But because the order gets to one exchange a few tiny fractions of a second earlier than it gets to the others, HFTs are able to get out ahead of the order at the other exchanges. What I don't understand is, what are they then doing? They're purchasing the shares before the institutional investor's broker can and then very slightly hiking the price? To more than the institutional client bid? What if the institutional client balks at the new higher price?

I just assume it's a bunch of algorithms manipulating various positions to disrupt the market and skim off the top of the transaction they're about to make. I think these kinds of trades involve a shit ton of money but I also didn't rtfa

What I don't understand is, what are they then doing? They're purchasing the shares before the institutional investor's broker can and then very slightly hiking the price? To more than the institutional client bid? What if the institutional client balks at the new higher price?

― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Monday, March 31, 2014 11:28 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well prices are always slightly variable moment to moment so execution orders necessarily have a little leeway on either side.

I suppose the institutional buyer could balk at the new slightly higher price. But it seems like usually they do need to buy the shares so they just pay up the extra few cents.

Felix Salmon is also unconvinced this is a big deal

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/03/31/michael-lewiss-flawed-new-book/

but I kind of wonder if anyone is adequately describing the full scope of what these high-speed/algo firms do.

he didn't even finish reading it yet, lol

Re: Salmon - I think he's forgetting that for most people, the bulk (if not all) of their investments are in their pensions/401Ks. And it sounds like it's those type of funds that are getting screwed by HFT.

If anything this is the most recent story in a long chain of 'the market is rigged' quasi revelations of the past couple decades. if you didn't know the market is rigged already you're not paying attention.

then again I've had all my money in a savings account for the last decade like a fucking asshole so what do I know

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks opened the second quarter on a higher note on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 hitting >>>a record high<<<, after data on manufacturing indicated economic growth was gaining traction after a harsh winter.

^Part of the reason for lack of traction? Market is up like 125% in 5 years.

This is a neat site to play with wrt the S&P
http://www.multpl.com/

Looks like we are hitting not only a nominal but nearing a real (inflation-adjusted) high in the S&P. However, earnings are also nearing a high. BUT, P/E looks high historically -- not insane high, but like probably ready for a correction high.

btw you know what else is historically pretty high? Home prices:
http://www.multpl.com/case-shiller-home-price-index-inflation-adjusted/

the article salmon links to that he wrote earlier on HFT points to the real issues.

if it really is just skimming fractions of pennies whatever, but the problem is they do much more than that and occasionally go nuts. also when something goes wrong everything goes massively out of control quickly, and furthermore they only 'provide liquidity' when everything is already liquid. the moment there's a disruption they pull out entirely and things go massively jagged.

the problem i'd imagine for the book is that getting ppl to talk about their weird prop algos is _hard_, but getting them to talk about being "more efficient" by a fraction of a second is the sort of thing they're not afraid to play up.

yeah theyre not called black boxes for nothing

I think some of the "pro" arguments are making it sound like these company's just narrow the spreads, but my impression is that they actually inflate the price very slightly.

And yeah there is more stuff that HFTs do than just this kind of quasi-frontrunning, and I agree that the "provide liquidity" argument doesn't seem to make much sense, or if it does there's just something I'm not understanding. If 100,000 shares are already available for sale and all an HFT does is instantly buy and resell them, that might increase trading volume by a lot but it doesn't seem to truly increase liquidity in any meaningful sense.

lewis is a great writer tho and the excerpts are just excerpts so i'll read the real book and see then.

(nb: i've met people at hft shops that really are pretty simple stuff, in the main [or at least rumored to be, they're not allowed to say], and also have met ppl at other more hedgefundy hft shops, and the ones at the fancier ones from what i've heard look down at the other guys as chumps who don't like to take risks. also the _exact same_ sort of not-really-frontrunning happened way before hft and electronic trading took off, because at human scale time you can still spot the pattern of a big order being chunked out in blocks and get ahead of it)

Well, "could spot" is probably more accurate than "can spot" no? I mean these orders themselves move so fast now that only the HFT guys can see them in "real time" is my impression, no?

Can anyone explain this to me?
http://www.businessinsider.com/bats-forced-to-retract-presidents-statement-from-cnbc-tussle-2014-4

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/books/2014/04/michael_lewis_s_flash_boys_about_high_frequency_trading_reviewed.html

More Felix Salmon (I think. I have not compared to the earlier Salmon Reuters article linked above)

But what we’re seeing, in the world of HFT, is not fraud, nor is it insider trading. Rather, HFT is a ridiculously and unnecessarily complicated mechanism for divvying up intermediation revenues between banks, exchanges, high-tech telecommunications outfits, and various algo-driven shops. Everybody is in on the game: not just the HFT guys, but also the exchanges, which optimize themselves for HFT game-playing, and the banks, which let HFTs into their dark pools, and especially the SEC, which has been cheering on the whole motley crew from the beginning. Even the big money managers are in on the act.

I liked this:
http://gawker.com/the-worst-things-are-the-things-that-everybody-knows-1556079304

^^

http://mathbabe.org/2014/04/09/lets-stop-talking-about-hft-for-a-little-while/

Nonsense. That's pretty much like saying "let's stop talking about Crimea because the real crisis is in (Syria, Palestine, ____)"

Besides, (1) I don't think we fully know the impact and/or potential impact of this stuff, and (2) in any case, the entire market has dramatically restructured itself in less than a decade, and it's something that needs to be better understood. Maybe it's not something the average person needs to care all that much about, but it's still an important topic.

Also, it seems to me like Wall Street and various trading firms feel very threatened by all this discussion. There's lots of spinning and covering and smokescreening going on. A lot of people with interests in this activity are unhappy about all the attention. That alone to me says we should look at it more closely. Goldman Sachs today announced that it's considering closing its dark pool all of a sudden. That sounds like anxious behavior to me.

nah i agree with cathy here. 'fixing' hft wouldn't fix anything about what's really wrong. to flip hurting's analogy, focusing on HFT is like complaining israeli soldiers in the occupied territories aren't getting meals with a proper nutritional balance.

"the food is terrible."

"and in such small portions!"

I remember leftish publications making an issue over interest rate swaps that wound up screwing over municipalities/pension funds. That was an smaller issue in terms of magnitude of impact, and the banks' conduct there was more justifiable and less egregious. Skimming off small amounts from every trade a public pension fund makes still aggregates to a good chunk of money that does wind up costing individual retirees.

if yr referring to swaps manipulation i think the "screwing pensions funds" angle on that was pretty fake too. depended what side of the swap they were on!

http://www.thenation.com/article/179233/why-wall-street-firms-make-terrible-landlords

Big money and cutthroat landlords have never been strangers to New York’s real estate market. But the descent of private equity firms on the city in the early years of this century was so striking that housing advocates dubbed the practice “predatory equity.” The name refers to the tactics these companies resorted to once it became clear that longtime tenants weren’t going to leave.

...

For tenants, these private equity purchases were essentially a lose-lose situation. For the deal to succeed, tenants had to be forced out. If, on the other hand, the deal failed and tenants got to stay, landlords immediately disinvested from the buildings, making the living conditions worse than ever.

^ insane. gonna re-post it in the gentrification thread

if yr referring to swaps manipulation i think the "screwing pensions funds" angle on that was pretty fake too. depended what side of the swap they were on!

― wat is teh waht (s.clover), Wednesday, April 9, 2014 12:00 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well yeah, and I also found it pretty unconvincing that taking the wrong side of an interest rate swap was the same as "getting screwed" -- they just bet the wrong way on rates. So maybe a bad example.

Also, in re that landlord thing -- as I said in the other thread, I lived in a building that had been bought by Black Rock. We were market rate tenants, but there were a lot of stabilized tenants left. There was definitely an effort to push them out, although I didn't get the impression that they were denying basic services -- mostly more doing "improvements" to the building and then seeking rent board increases. They had a very good management company running the place -- at least they were good to us, perhaps less so to the stabilized tenants.

What strikes me about that nation piece and about the practice described is how NAIVE it actually sounds like some of these investment funds are being about owning and managing rental properties. Their assumptions just sound totally unrealistic.

Ok, this pisses me off:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/09/yes-the-sec-was-colluding-with-banks-on-cdo-prosecutions/

More on that, with scathing quotes from a retiring SEC attorney
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-04-08/sec-goldman-lawyer-says-agency-too-timid-on-wall-street-misdeeds

The SEC has become “an agency that polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors,” Kidney said, according to a copy of his remarks obtained by Bloomberg News. “On the rare occasions when enforcement does go to the penthouse, good manners are paramount. Tough enforcement, risky enforcement, is subject to extensive negotiation and weakening.”

motherfuckers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/business/loosening-the-rules-on-insider-trading.html?emc=edit_th_20140425&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=31119931&_r=0

US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals seems inclined to change the rules on insider trading in a way that will make it easier for professional traders to escape liability.

The U.S. Justice Department is pursuing criminal investigations of financial institutions that could result in action in the coming weeks and months, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a video, adding that no company was "too big to jail."

The comments, made in a video posted on the Justice Department's website on Monday, came as federal prosecutors push two banks, BNP Paribas SA and Credit Suisse AG , to plead guilty to criminal charges to resolve investigations into sanctions and tax violations, respectively, according to people familiar with the probes.

While Holder did not name any banks, he said he is personally monitoring the ongoing investigations into financial institutions and is "resolved to seeing them through."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/05/usa-banks-holder-idUSL2N0NR0NA20140505

we don't believe you you need more people

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/business/loosening-the-rules-on-insider-trading.html?emc=edit_th_20140425&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=31119931&_r=0

US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals seems inclined to change the rules on insider trading in a way that will make it easier for professional traders to escape liability.

― curmudgeon, Friday, April 25, 2014 8:13 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fwiw, I think insider trading is probably the least terrible illegal thing that goes on on wall street

http://bostonreview.net/forum/suzanne-berger-how-finance-gutted-manufacturing

That author is making some awfully broad claims based on some very narrow examples, and I would want to see some more data on that.

everyone get ready to get fucked again

Michael S. Barr, a law professor at the University of Michigan who was an assistant Treasury secretary when the financial crisis was at its worst, is working on a book titled “Five Ways the Financial System Will Fail Next Time.”

The first of them, he says, is “amnesia, willful and otherwise,” regarding the causes and consequences of the crisis.

Let’s hope the others are not here yet. Amnesia was on full view this week when the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on “the dangers” of financial regulation. Mr. Barr, who helped write the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, was the sole witness who thought it made sense for regulators to study the asset management and insurance industries.

In his opening statement, the chairman of the committee, Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, proclaimed “it is almost inconceivable that an asset manager’s failure could cause systemic risk.” He also saw no danger to the system from insurance companies, which are “heavily regulated at the state level.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/business/the-financial-crisis-already-forgotten.html

x-post- finally skimmed that Boston review piece.

Over the first decade of the twenty-first century, about 5.8 million U.S. manufacturing jobs disappeared. The most frequent explanations for this decline are productivity gains and increased trade with low-wage economies. Both of these factors have been important, but they explain far less of the picture than is usually claimed.

Since the 1980s, financial market pressures have driven companies to hive off activities that sustained manufacturing.

As someone who has been following wall street's rush into the rental housing market, I found this story interesting:

http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-536567/
Housing Investors Settle Into a Holding Pattern
Housing investors are retrenching by becoming landlords.
Investors Turn Focus to Generating Steady Income From Tenants
With bargains less plentiful, large housing investors are slowing property purchases and turning their focus to generating steady income from tenants.

By Robbie Whelan, Conor Dougherty

After a buying binge that helped drive the housing recovery, big investors are being forced to rethink the home-rental business.

With bargains less plentiful, executives are slowing property purchases and turning their focus to generating steady income from tenants.

A spike in home prices over the past two years was quicker and more striking than many expected, squeezing returns and raising concerns about the industry’s growth prospects.

Small investors long have bought and sold homes. But two years ago when companies such as private-equity giant Blackstone Group LP got into the business, backers said it could emerge as an asset class rivaling publicly owned apartment-rental companies, which own over 600,000 units and have a stock-market value of $88 billion.

The companies jumped into distressed markets, buying foreclosed properties and other homes at depressed prices with plans to fix them up, rent them and eventually sell at a profit. But buyers have slowed their pace after acquiring roughly 140,000 homes worth about $20 billion.

The reason: the unexpectedly sharp recovery in the price of homes over the past two years. In housing markets hardest hit by the bust—places like Phoenix, Las Vegas and much of Southern California—prices have risen as much as 55% off their postcrash lows. Nationally, prices are up 11.4% in the past two years, according to Zillow Inc.

“The distressed wave has largely passed,” said Jonathan Gray, head of real estate for New York-based Blackstone, which has spent $8.6 billion on some 45,000 homes and is the biggest player in the sector.

At the peak of its buying in July 2013, Blackstone was spending about $140 million a week on homes; now it is spending roughly $30 million to $40 million. “We didn’t anticipate prices going up 20% a year,” Mr. Gray said.

Rising prices have forced many investors to accept lower returns than they originally had projected in certain markets, or to buy homes in new cities where the price appreciation has been less rapid. Two years ago, investors could buy in Sunbelt markets such as Phoenix and Las Vegas for gross yields that were in the 15% range, according to Green Street Advisors. That has fallen to around 10%, often lower.

Many investors have decided to hold onto homes for longer than they originally expected because a larger proportion of investor returns is coming from rent instead of the home’s rising value.

“The initial investment thesis was to invest in these homes, make a nice return on the way, and be positioned to sell them for a nice profit,” said Gary Beasley, co-CEO of Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust, one of four public companies in the business. “As we got into it in the first year or two, it became clear that it might be more valuable to hold onto these homes in the long term, and really treat them like a scattered-site apartment building.”

A recent Morgan Stanley report found that buy-to-rent investors have bought about $400 million worth of homes a month in the first few months of 2014, down from about $520 million a month last year.

Investor demand has cooled for stock in the four rental-home companies that went public to fund their expansion. Only American Homes 4 Rent has a stock trading above its IPO price.

Paul Puryear, director of real-estate research for Raymond James & Associates, said investors have been cool to the stocks in part because home-price growth has leveled off, and because the industry still hasn’t grown to a critical mass. “There are too many skeptics in the market,” he said.

Industry executives say there is plenty of money to be made from renting. They say more households became renters after the downturn because of the high rate of foreclosure and the inability or unwillingness of many to buy.

Indeed, apartment rents have been steadily rising for 17 quarters, according to real-estate data firm Reis Inc. They are now 11% higher than they were in late 2009 when they hit their postcrash low, Reis says.

Irvine, Calif.-based American Property Group’s search for yield in the Midwest is paying off, according to its CEO, Saman Shams. Recent acquisitions include a three-bedroom house with a big front yard on North Cherry Lake Lane in Indianapolis. About a month ago, the company paid $67,000 for the home and is spending $15,000 on renovations.

The plan is to rent the house for $1,150 a month. After costs, this will produce just under $10,000 in net income, or an annual net yield of 11.2%, much higher than the 5% to 7% net yields most investors are getting in other markets. “We’re holding these homes for the long term,” Mr. Shams said.

Analysts say the growth of the industry will depend in large part on whether investors can continue to get the better of traditional buyers. Investors have had an advantage in many markets because they have been able to pay cash and close quickly.

But that could change if the economy improves and mortgages get easier to obtain. Individuals may be able to outbid investors because they can get lower interest rates and aren’t as concerned about rate of return.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/appeals-court-overturns-decision-to-reject-s-e-c-citigroup-settlement/?hp

Ugh, and that's from a 2nd Cir. panel made up of a Clinton nominee and 2 Obama nominees.