Mysterious Algorithm Was 4% of Trading Activity Last Week

concealment sends this excerpt from CNBC: "A single mysterious computer program that placed orders — and then subsequently canceled them — made up 4 percent of all quote traffic in the U.S. stock market last week, according to the top tracker of high-frequency trading activity. The motive of the algorithm is still unclear. The program placed orders in 25-millisecond bursts involving about 500 stocks, according to Nanex, a market data firm. The algorithm never executed a single trade, and it abruptly ended at about 10:30 a.m. ET Friday."

Truth or dare...

[ccguy]

I hear the production IT department of a big trader had been drinking (something about the bonuses, don't know if they were celebrating or trying to forget) and started to play truth or dare.

The game was interrupted when the boss arrived (what he called "first thing in the morning").

my bad lol

[Anonymous Coward]

forgot to exit my Do While loop :) had to ctrl+al+del

Re:Market manipulation

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Bah, it's just Skynet studying for an MBA degree. It heard that it can get more money in business than in engineering and it wants to buy some new nifty peripherals.

Re:Testing

[hcs_$reboot]

Or they were using the new iOS6 trading API, where the "Commit" feature is yet to be implemented

Re:Identification?

[MadKeithV]

I find it a bit strange that these trading systems don't seem to use some kind of identification (like signed certificates). How is it possible that some system did these things and the stock exchange doesn't immediately know whose system this was? This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Regulation BAD. Free market GOOD. RRROOOOOAAARRRR!

Re:Truth or dare...

[organgtool]

That sounds awesome! As a solitary private investor, how can I leverage HFT to make money?