All bids and offers disappeared - has this ever happened?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peblo
  • Start date Start date
I had a nightmare - I had a position in the market when all of a sudden all bids and offers pulled out and I was hit with an infinite loss and a negative balance in my account :)

Has this ever happened in any market? I know something similar happens every now and then in the forex market - e.g. GBP/USD flash crash in 2016.
Has this ever happened in futures or equities?

Forex market appeals to me but I see no way to protect against such price spikes. How can you trade FX being aware of this?

Fukushimi Nuclear Reactor Tsunami March 2011.

All bids for USD/JPY and Crosses pulled. USD/JPY spreads widenning 100-150 pips. GBP/JPY spread widening 300-550 pips.

Yes, your "nightmare" can become true especially in currency markets when the central bank clowns don´t act as liquidity of last resort.

It seems, you have also missed the SNB debacle. Ever seen EUR/CHF losing 4000 pips within seconds?

EURCHF.PNG


A colleague I read about lost over $600 Million of his fund´s assets. And some.

As far as I understood, he was playing short term ranges in ERU/CHF leveraged to the hilt - making tons of profits due to SNB´s "promise" to defend the EUR/CHF cap at 1.20000.

And then the SNB decided to not anymore "defend" it.....
 
so, basically, it takes one event like that and a trader is gone. I cannot imagine that kind of a situation - there will always be "warning signs", I believe...

No, as the case of Swiss National Bank has shown....
 
Did brokers liquidate everybody at 1 cent? Sounds like something that brokers will love to do in order to honor margins

I'm not sure of the details but the exchanges (after the fact) busted all trades a certain % off the original prices before the flash crash. So I guess the people who placed those market or stop orders got a lucky break.
 
I'm not sure of the details but the exchanges (after the fact) busted all trades a certain % off the original prices before the flash crash. So I guess the people who placed those market or stop orders got a lucky break.

Although I have no personal experience with the complications of a flash crash on a position, the predicament of being long (short) a security and not knowing whether or not the trades will stand sounds pretty nightmarish. I've seen examples of traders entering an offsetting position (assuming the trades would stand), then finding out they were busted and now they have an open position and the market has ripped back the other way.

I seem to remember these kind of scenarios occurring a decade or so ago with some frequency.
 
IAR_D.jpg


btw, OP, this is a chart of the Argentinian Merval ETF. This is/was pretty close to a binary wipe out move. Down 40% in one day following a breakout to new highs.
 
Fukushimi Nuclear Reactor Tsunami March 2011.

All bids for USD/JPY and Crosses pulled. USD/JPY spreads widenning 100-150 pips. GBP/JPY spread widening 300-550 pips.

Yes, your "nightmare" can become true especially in currency markets when the central bank clowns don´t act as liquidity of last resort.

It seems, you have also missed the SNB debacle. Ever seen EUR/CHF losing 4000 pips within seconds?

View attachment 219519

A colleague I read about lost over $600 Million of his fund´s assets. And some.

As far as I understood, he was playing short term ranges in ERU/CHF leveraged to the hilt - making tons of profits due to SNB´s "promise" to defend the EUR/CHF cap at 1.20000.

And then the SNB decided to not anymore "defend" it.....

look at that chart

anyone playing for the defend, right at the lip of it , deserves not only to lose it all, but an extra 50% of assets under mgmt. can you say moron ?
 
Back
Top