Trading in Citigroup Shares Halted for Five Minutes
June 30th, 2010Anyone who trades ES with a depth of market tool: Did you notice anything weird happening with the sizes today? As you know, my network situation isn’t the best (understatement), but for a fraction of a second, a couple of times today, I noticed that the bid and ask sizes on each level of the DOM blinked zero. I might not have even noticed it, but I have histograms enabled for the sizes and they all just disappeared for a fraction of a second. In the past, when the network has crapped out, the DOM just froze, with all the sizes displaying the last data received.
This was on ESU10.
I just assumed that it was some new network problem, but, after reading this, I’d like to hear from any other ES traders who might have seen anything weird with the sizes today.
Via: Bloomberg:
A 17 percent plunge in Citigroup Inc. today triggered a five-minute trading pause, making the bank the second company halted by the two-week-old circuit- breaker program created to prevent market panics.
The order that caused the slump, 8,820 shares of Citigroup that crossed for $3.3174 at 1:03:51 p.m. in New York, was canceled, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The stock changed hands for $3.80 when trading resumed, compared with yesterday’s close of $4, as U.S. stocks posted the biggest losses in three weeks.
Regulators are seeking to prevent declines in one or more securities from causing volatility to snowball, prompting a cascade of losses across markets. During the May 6 rout that erased $862 billion in value from U.S. equities in less than 20 minutes, ETFs and companies such as Accenture Plc fell as much as 99 percent. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission said the plunge may have been fueled by curbs that applied on some venues and not others.
“It’s great that the circuit breaker picked it up and stopped everything, but how is an order that size allowed to print so far below where it’s trading?” said Alec Levine, an options strategist at Wallachbeth Capital LLC in New York. “If you did that for every stock you could effectively shut down the stock market.”
Yes. Oh well, I’ve read so many financial prognositicator reports about what’s going to happen in the stock market in the next few months that nothing shocks me about it anymore. I read one report tonight that said “live by the Mormon dictate, two years of food, water, shelter.”
I don’t care if you might think I’m a nutcase. The scent of coming regulation is going to have all kinds of speculators running for the exits from the market.
Hopefully, no one reading here will be crushed under the stampede for the exit doors. August 1 might be a big doom day. Yo no sey.
Food, water, shelter, someone human to hold onto.
We’re all going to be in this together. One big leveling field.
Imagine that.
I am actually looking forward to this.
What happens August 1? That’s a Sunday.
@ Eileen: We’re all going to be in this together. One big leveling field.
Imagine that.
I am actually looking forward to this.
I’m not.
I can confirm what you saw, Dom went no bid/no ask several times yesterday on the ES. Scary. This market is no longer people trading: it is now machines trading algos against other machines trading algos. When they stop, liquidity disappears … because it was never really there in the first place.
This pseudo market could implode at any time … traders beware.
cybele
cybele
@dagobaz
Wow, you saw it too… Do you have any guess at all about what that means? What is the purpose of doing that?
NEWSFLASH: According to salon.com, kevin & dagobaz are 2 dumz to git thiz hussle.
http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/06/28/the_war_against_the_economics_bloggers
(A click thru from the same site, for kevin to dissect)
“I am a Radical Homemaker Failure”
http://www.salon.com/life/motherhood/index.html?story=/mwt/pinched/2010/06/30/radical_homemaker_failure
[Sorry if these belong on the subreddit]