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If you look at the top chart from 10:40PM (22:40) - 11:00PM this is what the market looks like normally, as this period is a deep lull in trading. Here, roughly 500 contracts in Agenda (500 bought then 500 sold, 1,000 traded in all) bought 8.5 cents of agenda push. To push the market up 8.5...

So if you want to see something very cool, when you look at the large spikes overnight (most often sells) of, say, 150 contracts or more, you will almost always see a "smaller" order just precede it, by 10 to 120 seconds. This order is also huge by the standards of the overnight hours, 60 lots+...

Applejuice, Remember, the moves help pay for themselves by stopping guys out, including any robots who naively try to fade the moves "too soon." The NG move was in the middle of the night, when Singapore was at lunch, the deepest lull in the market. It undoubtedly annihilated many robots trading...

Red, the earlier post by Tommo is similar to what I do. Basically, when a spike is the result of an attack, the price is temporarily not in equilibrium and should eventually return. So, you see if you can fade it. The trick is, to learn which spikes are, and are not, predatory attacks (some...

This is a great question. The moves don't stop until the machine recovers the same number of lots it sold (bought). The Nov 20 took 8.5 cents to wake up enough traders to stop themselves out. Your question alludes to a key point. That is, can the move really go as far was necessary? The answer...

jelite, you are free to interpret the action as you see it. I hope that if you go to buy, say, 100 contracts of Natural Gas, in a market with fewer than 10 contracts at the NBBO, you break your order into 10 orders of 10 each, spaced 10 seconds apart, paying the NBBO, rather than put it thru as...

In prompt CME Natural Gas today, you will see a predatory machine attack right after 10:20AM. The rhythm and time-of-hour were for Sell, as were the fundamentals. You will see 300 contracts of HFT attack, pushing price up 1.5 cents (a large amount). The attack continued until all of the robotic...

Simple Volume is fine- these are sharp moves in one direction. My software colors them green and red to make it easy to go back and study. Let me add I am on one-second resolution for all real-time charts.

Yes- all trades today are with machines as counterparty. If you try to get on the NBBO they will swarm you to crowd you out. All arriving orders are filled by market-making machines.

In Crude, right before a known weak/sell rhythm, you will often see a several-hundred-contract market order buy execute and push price 15-25 cents up, to stop out any robots who have sold in advance. The machine that put the spike on knows the robots are there because he, the machine, just...

The velocity of money is indeed at an all-time low and not only does QE not fix this it's making it worse. QE is expanding the monetary base by giving free money to those least able/willing to spend it. There is no churn. It's "trickle down" on steroids. I'm not suggesting stocks are expensive...

The original post alludes to the "Carry Trade," borrowing in USD to buy Risky assets, here Equities. QE was specifically designed to promote Carry, and whenever the Equity markets have paused the Fed has gone out of its way to promise monetary policy will stay loose. The OP basically has it...

There is an expression: "when the dentists get in, get out." When the BOJ codified 25% of SS funds into Equities, saying it needed to "improve returns," this was the "dentists" piling in and sets in motion calling the top of real economic growth in Japan. Growth requires debt financing as well...

If your order has a Stop attached, it is actually managed on the IB server and they occasionally miss executions. If your order was a simple limit order, without a stop, it went to the exchange and was in a queue to be filled. It's possible there were other orders in front of you being filled first.

Some basic math: CME Crude Oil: Initial margin now $5100 (had been significantly lower), and with the fall in Crude prices this margin is now all the way up to 7% of the notional value of the Oil. Equities: RegT margin 50% of notional. If you qualify for "Portfolio Margin" (as many serious...

By investing 25% of social pension funds in equities, Japan has created the ultimate bubble, one completely unsustainable and affecting the to-be most massive currency depreciation ever for a G7 economy. Japan is now locked into permanent QE. It's truly absurd. It's borderline feudal. Japan has...

If you watch the time and sales data you will see around 70% of the trading volume in any Crude Oil contract occurs in bursts of over 100 contracts over less than one second. These are all automated "trades" (I use the word "trades" loosely) not entered into by any discretionary trader, since...

IAS, I mentioned a specific "signature" related to a series of naive 1-contract Buys during a lull. The moves have a classic signature, distinguished from other price action. Go look at the 1AM hour, and note the dips at :15 and :45 exactly on-rhythm as I mentioned to you. The market is quiet...

IAS, Globex trades during Holidays. It's basically "business as usual" excepting for less liquidity/more volatility with New York offline, and a slightly earlier, London-centric "hard" close. The re-opens (1800 ET) are right back on schedule for Singapore.

Anyone following WTI, we just had a 20-cent predatory wash attack 5 minutes ago, with crude going transiently 15 cents wide at the bottom so any robots who bought there (at market) actually paid more than the price before the 20-cent drop. Price right back where it started within 3 minutes, of...