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High Frequency Trader Fined: âQuote-Stuffingâ Crackdown Afoot?
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Dow Jones Newswires Nathan Becker reports:
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said it had censured and fined Trillium Brokerage Services LLC $1 million and fined and suspended 11 of its employees in connection with using an âillicit high-frequency trading strategy and related supervisory failuresâ to gain an advantage.
The financial regulator said that through nine proprietary traders, Trillium entered ânumerousâ layered, market-moving orders that generated selling or buying interest in specific stocks. By entering those orders, Trillium traders âcreated a false appearance of buy- or sell-side pressure,â Finra said, noting that because of the strategy, the traders got advantageous prices that otherwise wouldnât have been available to them on 46,000 occasions.
Finra said it fined the traders, Trilliumâs director of trading and its chief compliance officer a total of $802,500 and ordered a combined $292,000 of disgorgements. The 11 people were suspended from the securities industry or as principals for periods ranging from six months to two years.
In settling the case, the small New York brokerage and the employees didnât admit or deny the charges but consented to the entry of Finraâs findings.
The âillicit high-frequency trading strategyâ in question sounds quite a bit like the âquote-stuffing,â a practice spotlighted by The Journal in a front-page story earlier this month. That piece defines quote stuffing âunusually large numbers of orders to buy or sell stocks ⦠placed in a fraction of a second, only to be canceled almost immediately.â Some, theorize that the practice may have played a role in the May 6 âFlash Crash.â A joint SEC/CFTC report on the âFlash Crashâ is due sometime this month.