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Norwegian Day Traders Convicted For Manipulating Computer Trading System
An anonymous reader submits news of the conviction of two Norwegian day traders, Svend Egil Larsen and Peder Veiby, who were on Wednesday fined and given suspended sentences (Norwegian court, Norwegian document) for cleverly working out — and cashing in on — the way the computerized trading system of Interactive Brokers subsidiary Timber Hill would respond to certain trades. They used the system's predictable responses to manipulate the value of low-priced stocks. The pair have gotten some sympathetic reactions from around the world, and promise to appeal.
So these guys figured out how to second-guess somebody's trading algorithm. How in hell is that a crime?
Many mechanical trading algorithms are also trying to second-guess the actions of other market participants in order to make a profit. These guys just did the same, apparently in cases where the trades made by a particular mechanical algorithm would be big enough to move the market themselves.
Mechanical trading algorithms are either fair game, or preferably, should be illegal. If mechanical trading algorithms are legal, then what these men did should definitely not be illegal.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
All stock trading changes the market. Does the system they beat have algorithms for anticipating the results of its own trades on the market? If so, why aren't the owners of the system being brought up on charges for manipulating the market?
No, the reason these guys were brought up on charges was because they aren't a big investment house, and beat a big investment house at its own game, not because they did something that's different from what any stock trader does.
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I know the guys at Timber Hill from before IB bought them. They are what one would calls pros. It is hard to think of them as victims. They have all the money hardware and brains a company could want. Actually, I would call Timber Hill fairly predatory. These guys were printing big money through high speed algo trading before anyone knew what that was back in 2000.
Knowing them, I doubt they are happy that their name is in the news. Years ago, they truly didn't want any attention. The less the outside world knew, the better.
The big issue is: this is essentially what all the high speed traders are doing. The line here is fuzzy. However, I fear these Norwegian fellows are being held to a higher standard than people who are more powerful and more established.
Most stock traders aren't targeting one other stock trader with a series of transactions, they manipulated that robot into giving them arbitrage. However, I thought their defense was quite strong in that a trade is a fact and can never be untrue as such. Poorly interpreting that trade makes you a bad investor. Repeatedly interpreting trades poorly makes you a bad investor with no learning ability. If that was illegal, there'd be lawsuits flying all over the stock market.
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All of this is a symptom of how far the stock market has branched from its purposes - it's not just a way people have involved distributed judgement of the worthiness of societal ventures anymore, now we have huge parasites in the system, feeding on each other. When the boot comes down, I don't think we should cry. Only a few of these people make an honest living that benefits society.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
It is like card counting. All you do is take play a game according to THEIR rules and be just a bit better at it than an average joe. Use of your memory in a card game is something that the casinos do not like and therefore it is banned.