dimelab dimelab: shrinking the gap between talk and action.

Automated trading Program Topic in The Credit Debacle Catalog

Tue 2010-04-27 08:27 EDT

Web of Debt - COMPUTERIZED FRONT RUNNING: ANOTHER GOLDMAN-DOMINATED FRAUD

While the SEC is busy investigating Goldman Sachs, it might want to look into another Goldman-dominated fraud: computerized front running using high-frequency trading programs...Wall Street commentator Max Keiser...claims to have invented one of the most widely used programs for doing the rigging. Not that that's what he meant to invent. His patented program was designed to take the manipulation out of markets. It would do this by matching buyers with sellers automatically, eliminating ``front running'' -- brokers buying or selling ahead of large orders coming in from their clients. The computer program was intended to remove the conflict of interest that exists when brokers who match buyers with sellers are also selling from their own accounts. But the program fell into the wrong hands and became the prototype for automated trading programs that actually facilitate front running...Keiser and HSX co-founder Michael Burns applied for a patent for a ``computer-implemented securities trading system with a virtual specialist function'' in 1996, and U.S. patent no. 5960176 was awarded in 1999...The listing for Keiser's patent shows that it has been referenced by 132 others involving automated program trading or HFT...

Computerized Front Running; debt; Goldman-dominated fraud; Web.