Category: Markets

Markets

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Meanwhile In London, A Stunning Scene Emerges

Elite E Services
When one thinks of lines of people waiting patiently to obtain “hard currency”, one may think Russia, as was the case in December 2014 when the currency was plunging…
… or Greece in the summer of 2015…
… one would certainly not expect it in the city considered by many as the capital of capitalism: London.
And yet, as the FT shows in what may be the first of many such stunning images, “long queues stretched outside foreign exchange bureaux in the City of London on Thursday as people cashed in their pounds ahead of the EU referendum.”
Behold: London, circa right now.
Line in front of a Longon foreign exchange bureau.
In scenes reminiscent of the queues that formed outside branches of Northern Rock and led to its collapse in 2007, City workers queued impatiently around the block outside forex bureaux on Wednesday afternoon. Summaya, a 31-year-old employee of a retail bank who declined to give her surname, lined up outside the Foreign Exchange Services shop on Cannon Street. She said she was going to change “several thousand pounds” into US dollars and euros because she was convinced the public mood was shifting in favour of Brexit.
“I’m protecting my money. I will stick it under the mattress until Friday,” she said, adding that Tuesday night’s televised debate had swung opinion among her friends and colleagues in favour of Brexit. “People are changing their views.”
Odd: one would not get that impression based on the several moneyed bettors who were skewing the bookies lines. Luckily, sentiment on the ground is avaiable and much more actionable than manipulated indirect data. In any case, this is what is really taking place in the UK as of this moment:
The Post Office said Tuesday’s sales of foreign currency were nearly four times higher than the same date last year, while sales in branches were nearly 49 per cent higher. Currency sales on Tuesday were up 74 per cent year on year, said the Post Office.
Thomas Cook said: “There’s been a surge in customers buying euros in the last six weeks and euro sales have been consistently strong, building day by day.”
Several economists predict a Leave outcome would trigger a dramatic fall in the pound when markets open on Friday, while a vote to Remain should see the pound rally. But several analysts said this week’s sharp sterling recovery probably limited the scope of the currency’s rise.
Daniel Priori, an Italian who has been working as a cashier at the International Currency Exchange kiosk at Waterloo station for a year, said he and his two colleagues had dealt with many more customers than usual.
Asked why, he replied: “Because they are scared about tomorrow.” He said the majority of transactions were people changing sterling into euros.
To be sure, not everyone is terrified of the inevitable collapse in sterling in case of Brexit (which is what the Scaremongering campaign is all about). Some just want some vacation money…
[S]everal of those queueing were exchanging their holiday money. Standing in a queue outside Thomas Exchange on Cannon Street, 44-year-old Chris Nobbs, who works in insurance, said: “I go to Alicante in Spain in a couple of weeks, so I’m just taking my euros out today instead of next week. I do not take more than what I need on holiday, but who knows, maybe this will earn me some extra cups of coffee.”
In the queue outside City Forex, on Leadenhall Street, City worker Ed was planning to change “a few hundred quid” before travelling to Greece on holiday next week. “I don’t have a strong sense of the [referendum] result, but just want to hedge against the downside. I’ll change half now and half later,” he said.
… But it’s safe to say that the vast majority of those lining up have far more existential concerns. Whether or not these are validated will be revealed as soon as the FX markets open for trading after the Brexit vote is released.
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HFTs Lose: IEX Granted Exchange Status As SEC Says The Speed Race Is Over

Elite E Services
Earlier this week when we reported that the SEC staff had unexpectedly granted approval of the IEX exchange, the culmination of a long battle between free and unrigged market supporters on one hand and the HFT lobby and the NY Fed’s “arms length” HFT operation and gargantuan retail order internalizer better known as Citadel on the other, we warned not to get too excited: “it is possible that the final vote will contain some variation on “protected quote” clause, thereby giving IEX its long-awaited exchange status but stripping its clients of the much needed anti-HFT protections, which are precisely the reason why so many vocal supporters of IEX have emerged in recent months.”
We were wrong: in a late vote on Friday evening, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted to certify IEX as the U.S.’s 13th national stock exchange, giving the startup a license to challenge the Intercontinental Exchange, Nasdaq. and BATS. More importantly, the SEC’s decision resolved a clash over whether its rules, which sped the transition to fully electronic markets, allow IEX to use a “speed bump” that slows orders by just 350 millionths of a second, as popularized in Michael Lewis’ book Flash Boys. Ultimately IEX will get unconditional status.
We were also partially right on the “protected quote” debate: as the WSJ writes, SEC Chairman Mary Jo White, and Commissioner Kara Stein, a Democrat, approved IEX’s bid. Republican Commissioner Michael Piwowar backed the broader move to approve IEX as an exchange, but dissented from a decision to give IEX what is known as a “protected quote,” which – as noted above – requires brokers to send orders to IEX when it shows the best price across all 13 national stock exchanges.
Having won approval, IEX will effectively become the first HFT-free venue, and will likely attract substantial institutional interest as the risk of being frontrun by HFT parasites is no longer present. Ironically, its competitors had said that IEX’ model threatens investor benefits, when the reality was precisely the opposite.
Citadel and high-frequency trading firms deluged the SEC with letters that argued IEX’s speed bump would violate rules that require orders be “immediately accessible” to traders. Intercontinental Exchange Chief Executive Jeff Sprecher, whose firm owns the New York Stock Exchange, told analysts in February that granting IEX permission would be “un-American” because it would create a new “monopoly,” with IEX as the only exchange with a speed bump.
Citadel’s founder, billionaire Kenneth Griffin, got personally involved in the fight against IEX, meeting with the SEC as recently as June 3 to lobby against its exchange bid, according to a regulatory notice.
We are delighted, if stunned, that the SEC disagreed.  That said Citadel’s anger was palpable: “Today’s decision will test and potentially reverse the gains in fairness, efficiency and transparency that have been made to our markets over the last decade,” Citadel said. “We must be vigilant to identify unintended consequences, and firm in our commitment to equitable and consistent treatment for all investors.”
What is surprising is that it is well-known among market participants, and originally reported here, that the NY Fed transacts by way of Citadel at key market inflection points, when bursts of momentum ignition out of the Chicago HFT powerhouse prevent ther market from tumbling when they break a downward spiral in prices. A question thus emerges if the SEC’s snub to Citadel was also an indirect snub to the NY Fed and market manipulation.
While it remains to be seen what the SEC’s rationale was for granting IEX exchange status, one possible explanation is that even the SEC had noticed the unprecedented collapse in investor and trader interest, especially at the retail level, as the topic of how rigged the market has become is now a daily occurrence. As such the SEC felt compelled to take a stand. Or maybe not, and there is some other ulterior motive. We hope to find out.
For those unfamiliar with the IEX story, the exchange says its 350 microsecond delay is just long enough to protect investors from predatory high-speed trading that can front-run the orders of slower investors. Opponents such as Citadel LLC, the hedge-fund manager and electronic market maker, had warned that any delays would create stale prices and the potential for manipulation.
“It does mark a pendulum shift where ‘speed is king’ may have reached the furthest point it can go,” said Andrew Upward, head of market structure at brokerage Weeden & Co. “They’ve had a victory in this debate about the importance of speed in markets, and it’s a setback for those who think speed and efficiency are the end all and be all.”
On its website, Brad Katsuyama, CEO of IEX wrote the following letter of gratitude:
To our Sell-Side and Buy-Side Partners,
On behalf of the entire IEX team, I would like to sincerely thank you all for supporting us throughout our application to become an exchange. We are thrilled that the SEC has approved our Exchange Filing which puts us on track to commence a symbol-by-symbol roll-out on August 19th, concluding on September 2nd.
It’s been quite a journey from working in a windowless room with no money in 2012, to launching our ATS, and now completing the lengthy (and I’m sure for many…tiring) Form 1 process.
We have faced several obstacles along the way and we learned along the way, but we hope our partners realize that our team’s hearts and minds are in the right place – our goal is to bring real competition to the exchanges by challenging the rising cost model for data and technology while also protecting investors and delivering superior execution quality.
The IEX team is extremely excited about the road ahead, and we are grateful to be in the position to improve fairness, simplicity and transparency in our industry.
Thank you again for your support.
That said, the SEC’s decision may not be the end of the fight. Last month, attorneys for Nasdaq argued that the SEC could be sued if it approves IEX. The lawyers said the SEC would first have to change its own rules to explicitly allow for a speed bump. Absent that step, the lawyers wrote, the SEC lacked the authority to approve IEX’s proposal.
To this, the SEC issued an interesting response: addressing concerns about the legality of speed bumps – widely used by most of IEX’s exchanges however in an inverse way, where premium paying clients are exempt from delays which are then abused by HFT frontrunners, the SEC separately said that delays of less than one millisecond (less than the time it takes to blink an eye) are consistent with its Regulation NMS. This is what the SEC said in its updated guidance under Reg NMS:
The Staff believes that, consistent with the Commission’s interpretation regarding automated quotation under Rule 600(b)(3) of Regulation NMS, delays of less than a millisecond are at a de minimis level that would not impair fair and efficient access to a quotation, consistent with the goals of Rule 611.  The Staff’s view is informed by the efficient operation of the markets and the geographic and technological latencies experienced by market participants. Today, a one millisecond intentional access delay is well within the current geographic and technological latencies already experienced by market participants when routing orders between trading centers.  Accordingly, the Staff believes that such a delay would be de minimis and consistent with the Commission’s interpretation of “immediate” as used in Rule 600(b)(3) of Regulation NMS.
The Staff notes that the Commission’s proposed interpretation included guidance reflecting a sub-millisecond standard.  Though the Commission did not adopt that guidance as part of its final interpretation, the Staff notes that commenters on the proposed interpretation were divided on the appropriateness of an intentional access delay but did not advocate for a different specific standard.  Further, the Staff believes the sub-millisecond standard is a reasonable line to draw, as it is broadly consistent with the latencies experienced by market participants today when routing orders around the primary exchange data centers, and is well within the maximum geographic latencies experienced when routing orders to the most geographically remote exchange data center.
The Staff acknowledges that market participants using the most sophisticated technology may today encounter access delays of substantially less than one millisecond when accessing the quotes of a single exchange whose data center is co-located with their own or located nearby.  However, even the most technologically advanced market participants today encounter delays in accessing protected quotations of other “away” automated trading centers that can substantially exceed one millisecond, that either are transitory (e.g., as a result of message queuing) or permanent (e.g., as a result of physical distance).  In today’s market environment, the Staff considers that intentional delays of less than a millisecond in quotation response times are de minimis in that they would not impair a market participant’s ability to fairly and efficiently access a quote, consistent with the goals of Rule 611.  While the Staff believes that intentional access delays that are less that one millisecond are de minimis, that does not necessarily mean that all intentional delays that are one millisecond or more are not de minimis.
The technical interpretation of the above is that according to the SEC, IEX’s 350 microseconds delay is negligible, and thus the market is automated and the quote is protected.
The far more important practical interpretation, is that the SEC has set a ceiling for what it deems the speed race among HFT firms, which over the past decade have moved from fiber optics, to microwaves to lasers in their endless quest to be faster and quicker than their competitors in order to frontrun them.
Well, no more, because with its decision, the SEC has capped what technological advancement in trading can achieve going forward, as now a 350ms delay will become the norm, while anything below 1 millisecond is deemed a de minimis delay. 
This is catastrophic for HFTs for whom microseconds mean all the difference between profit and loss.
And once the vast majority of the trading public shifts over to IEX which is by definition HFT free, it will mean that the HFT scourge, already having largely cannibalized itself over the past several years, is about to end.
This is tremendous news, as it puts to rest a key part of our crusade launched in April 2009 when we first explained just how destructive for market functioning HFTs really are.
Now we can shift all our attention to central banks, the last remaining violator of free and efficient markets.
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Don’t Tell Anybody About This Story on HFT Power Jump Trading

Elite E Services
Far from Wall Street in a Chicago neighborhood once synonymous with urban blight, two futures industry veterans are using secrecy and speed to mint fortunes.
Their firm, Jump Trading LLC, was all but invisible until it was among six companiessubpoenaed in April by New York prosecutors. Jump has ascended the ranks of high-frequency traders during the past 15 years to become one of the top firms on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where $925 trillion of derivatives changed hands last year. Its annual revenue has exceeded half a billion dollars.
The company was founded by traders Bill DiSomma and Paul Gurinas, whose level heads caused them to stand out in the cacophony of a Chicago trading floor. Today, the pair parcel money among 20 or so teams, each guarding its computer models from the others to trade stocks, bonds and commodities with strategies that go almost as fast as light.
“Billy was one of the few upright, stand-up guys in the pits,” said Yra Harris, owner of Praxis Trading who knew DiSomma when they worked in the Chicago trading pits during the 1990s. “He had a very good presence. There were all kinds of games being played in the pits, but he wasn’t one of those who messed others around.”
Befitting its history of stealth, neither the firm nor its principals spoke for this article, and three people familiar with the matter said former employees were told not to speak with Bloomberg News.

‘Low Profile’

Jump’s reluctance to speak comes as arrangements between financial exchanges and HFT firms are being examined by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Jump hasn’t been publicly accused of wrongdoing by any government investigator.
“Although Jump is well known and respected within the industry, they keep a very low profile beyond the narrow confines of electronic trading,” said William Sterling, former chief of UBS AG’s global equities electronic business who co-runs Headlands Technologies LLC, a quantitative trading firm.
Jump’s headquarters are north of Chicago’s financial district in an area once dominated by one of the nation’s most dangerous public-housing projects, the Cabrini-Green Homes, whose high-rises were demolished during the last decade. Its offices are in the former warehouse of Montgomery Ward, a remnant of the city’s days as the mail-order capital of the U.S.
Jump has about 350 employees who also work in offices in New York, London and Singapore, according to a version of its website that was deleted earlier this year. While the closely held company, which trades with its own money, makes few disclosures about its inner workings or finances, there are clues to its size.

Public Filings

Some of its financial filings are public. In 2010, Jump reported net income of $268 million and operating revenues of $512 million for that year, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Profit amounted to $316 million in 2008, according to another filing with the regulator. At the end of March 2014, it owned U.S. stocks valued at $239 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from an SEC filing.
Last year, Jump paid CME Group Inc., the world’s largest futures exchange, $83 million in trading fees while receiving about $17 million for market making activities, according to a separate SEC filing that doesn’t identify Jump by name.
In April, Jump sought to force Twitter Inc. to reveal who was posing as one of its employees posting tweets. After Bloomberg News in April revealed that Schneiderman subpoenaed Jump as part of an industry investigation, the trading firm erased most of its website.

‘Made Billions’

“From what I understand, they’ve made billions in profits,” said James Koutoulas, chief executive officer of Typhon Capital Management LLC in Chicago, who said he has friends with ties to Jump. After the controversy stirred by Michael Lewis’s book “Flash Boys,” which said the U.S. stock market is rigged, “the high-frequency trading guys are trying to avoid any type of publicity,” he said.
Neither DiSomma, 49, nor Gurinas, 46, responded to phone or e-mail requests for interviews, and Jump didn’t respond to messages sent to its “media inquiries” e-mail address. The firm declined to meet with Bloomberg News on an unscheduled visit by a reporter to their offices in April. Subsequent meetings with Jump’s chief operating officer, Matt Schrecengost, arranged by Tessa Wendling, the firm’s general counsel, were canceled. She didn’t return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment.

Innate Humility

Humility is innate in Gurinas, according to his mother.
“He doesn’t like stories about him, and so wouldn’t want any of his friends to talk about him,” Nola Gurinas said in a phone interview.
While some high-frequency firms were created by computer programmers, DiSomma and Gurinas were pit traders at the CME — the guys who shout and wave their arms to get the best prices. They met in 1992, and, as financial markets started migrating to electronic trading, they saw the potential of using computers to take advantage of price discrepancies in different markets, a tactic called arbitrage.
In 1999, DiSomma and Gurinas left to start their own firm, Akamai Trading LLC, partnering with John Harada. William Shepard, a board member of CME Group since 1997, bought a stake while agreeing not to get involved in management, according to a former Jump employee. Harada left to co-start rival Allston Trading LLC, and DiSomma and Gurinas changed Akamai Trading’s name in 2001 to Jump, a nod to how traders attract attention to themselves on exchange floors.

CME Link

Shepard is the only CME Group director without a photo next to his biography on the exchange’s website. His links to Jump require the exchange to disclose any financial relationship between the two companies because of his status as a board member. CME Group didn’t name the firm he works for in the regulatory filing earlier this year that disclosed the payments between Jump and the exchange. Shepard didn’t return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment.
CME Group’s conflict of interest policy prohibits board members from voting on matters where they could stand to benefit, said Anita Liskey, a spokeswoman for the exchange. She declined to comment on Shepard or Jump.
Jump hired scientists, mathematicians and programmers to build complex algorithms for trading U.S. and European equities, futures, currencies and bonds at speeds measured in fractions of a second. Unlike other firms that lease microwave towers to shave milliseconds off the time it takes to send trade orders in the U.S. and Europe, Jump buys them through a subsidiary, including one tower in Belgium that was once used by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

‘Industry Leader’

“We have become an industry leader, quietly setting the standard for sophisticated trading strategies,” Jump said on a now-erased version of its website.
Jump is one of the few HFT firms that have made the investment to become a clearing member at Chicago-based CME Group. That means it pays the lowest trading fees in return for maintaining preset capital minimums, according to CME Group’s rules. It also must contribute cash and securities to CME Group’s clearinghouse default fund.
DiSomma and Gurinas, who grew up in the Chicago area and graduated from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, are opposites, according to former employees. DiSomma is outgoing and cracks jokes, while Gurinas is reserved and prefers the quiet life, people who know them said.

‘Quiet Guy’

Scott Davis worked alongside Gurinas in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures pit during the late 1990s. “He was not your typical loudmouthed, boisterous guy in the pit,” said Davis. “He was a quiet guy. He went about his business.”
DiSomma lives modestly by Wall Street standards. He sometimes drove to work in a pickup truck and owns a 111-year-old house in Chicago’s Oak Park suburb — an area known for the diverse economic backgrounds of its residents. DiSomma bought his house, located a block south of railroad tracks, for $645,000 in 1999, according to county records. By contrast, the founder of another high-speed trading firm, Virtu Financial Inc.’s Vincent Viola, is selling his 19-room Manhattan townhouse for $114 million, real-estate listings show.
DiSomma also owns a 623-acre (2.5 square kilometers) farm in Cuba, Illinois, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of Chicago where he hunts for deer, pheasant and turkey and fishes for largemouth bass, according to photos on the property’s website.

Hospital Donation

His family foundation had $29.8 million at the end of 2012, according to the latest tax filings. DiSomma donated $25 million to a hospital and medical college in Peoria, Illinois, in 2011, according to the Journal Star, a newspaper in the city. The hospital had treated his daughter after she was injured in an all-terrain vehicle accident.
“At Jump Trading, what we do … it’s not exactly God’s work,” DiSomma said in February 2010 interview with the Journal Star. “What you guys do down here is closer to God’s work,” he said referring to OSF Saint Francis Medical Center’s children’s hospital, which used DiSomma’s donation to build a training facility called the Jump Trading Simulation and Education Center.
Gurinas, whose wife is a recruiter at Jump, lives with his family in Lincoln Park, an upscale neighborhood on Chicago’s north side. He spent $3.1 million in 2006 on a 3,690-square-foot home, according to the Cook County Assessor. Gurinas also owns land and aranch in Montana. A Jump affiliate has a microwave license in Missoula, Montana.

Government Reports

One of the firm’s specialties is trading quickly on the information contained in government statistical releases, according to two competitors of the firm and a former employee. Jump pre-loads its trading algorithms based on whether, say, the unemployment rate will rise or fall, then executes the strategy within tiny fractions of a second following the announcement, the former employee said.
The programmed trades often exploit price differences between exchange-traded funds based on the S&P 500 stock index and futures based on the S&P traded at CME Group, the former employee said. They follow this arbitrage across many equity indexes and futures, such as the Nasdaq or Russell groupings of stocks, as well as in markets in the U.K. and Germany, the person said.
To succeed in the U.S., Jump needed the fastest connection between the data center for the New York Stock Exchange in New Jersey and CME Group’s facility outside Chicago.

Saving Time

Then, as now, firms competed fiercely to shave milliseconds off the round-trip time. That meant if Jump had signed a lease on one fiber-optic network and then a faster one was built later, it would rent space on that one, too, the former employee said. At one point, the firm had access to four distinct fiber-optic lines, the former employee said.
The firm was also among the first to use microwave towers to send information between Illinois and New Jersey, according to executives at rival firms. Jump also uses microwaves in Europe, including a tower it bought last year that relayed messages for the U.S. military during the Cold War. Though it can carry less data, microwave can travel distances in roughly half the time of even the most advanced fiber-optic cables.
Jump guards its brand. In April, it filed a petition in an Illinois circuit court to compel Twitter to disclose who was behind an account using the name “jumptrading@algoswild.” Jump said the account was unauthorized and it needed the name of the account holder “who may be responsible in damages for impersonating Jump Trading and infringing Jump’s intellectual property, including its trademarks.”

Case Dropped

Without specifying why, Jump and Twitter requested that the case be dismissed at the end of June, which it was, according to court records in Chicago. The Twitter account is no longer active. Stacie Hartman, a lawyer for Jump listed on the petition, and Twitter’s legal representative, Jade Lambert, didn’t return phone calls requesting comment.
Jump’s industrial-style offices, which occupy two floors of the eight-story building, are amishmash of concrete pillars, exposed overhead cabling and sleek lighting and glass doors.
The office atmosphere is akin to a Silicon Valley startup, with employees dressing casually. They have catered lunch every Friday, company-sponsored happy hours and sporting events. The firm holds annual summer picnics and holiday parties have been held at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum.

‘Highly Sought’

“Jump is among the high-frequency trading shops that is highly sought after by our candidates, who’ve often told us they have a very strong work-hard-and-reward-hard culture,” said Deepali Vyas, founder of VnV Partners, a recruitment firm in New York.
While Jump describes itself as having a “casual atmosphere and flat organizational structure,” according to a former version of its website, it has an unusual setup compared with rivals.
Jump rents out computers and other infrastructure to its traders, who are organized into independent trading teams. The groups operate as separate cost centers and are staffed by as few as two people or as many as about 20, according to two former employees. Some groups trade across markets while others focus on one.
Jump applies its secrecy ethic within the firm. The teams don’t share information about trading strategies with each other — profitable groups are rewarded with more technology or money to trade with, former employees said.

Founders’ Teams

DiSomma and Gurinas sit with the traders and each have their own teams. Jump Core Strategies, run by Gurinas, caused resentment within the firm because of the growth of its assets, former employees said.
Among the successful teams are Statistical Trading Group, or STG, which has been run by former Citadel LLC traders Tom Gallagher and Satyanarayana Dharanipragada. Other groups have been led by Igor Pavlovsky, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate who trades currencies, and ex-Citadel employees Ken Terao and Alexei Kamenev. Messages left for Gallagher, Dharanipragada, Pavlovsky and Terao weren’t returned, and Kamenev declined to comment.
An exodus of employees to Jump from Citadel was the subject of a clash between billionaire Ken Griffin’s Chicago hedge-fund firm and Jump in 2012. Citadel said former workers may have taken proprietary trading strategies and computer code worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Jump. Jump said that Citadel was misusing the courts to get information on a competitor.

James Chiu

An Illinois judge rejected Citadel’s bid to compel Jump to identify ex-employees who joined the firm since 2005, and any strategies they later developed. The case was dismissed in October 2012.
At Jump, James Chiu — whom ex-employees said was in the trading firm’s Oceans group — broke CME Group rules in 2010, according to a CME Group disciplinary memo from 2014.
A CME Group panel found that from Aug. 30 through Sept. 15, 2010, Chiu manually entered orders, supplementing trades that he had already placed, then canceling them before his other orders could be executed, the exchange said in a March 3, 2014, notice on its website. His actions potentially disrupted the market, the panel said.
The exchange said Chiu was employed as a proprietary trader by a member firm, but didn’t name Jump in the disciplinary action. The panel found that Chiu broke the exchange’s rule prohibiting “dishonorable or uncommercial conduct,” among others. Chiu, whose LinkedIn Corp. profile says he was a former team leader at Jump, settled with the CME Group without admitting or denying wrongdoing. He was ordered to pay a $155,000 fine and was suspended from any trading on the exchange’s markets for two months.

Predicting Future

Chiu, who now runs his own proprietary-trading firm, Vatic Labs, in San Francisco, said in a phone interview that CME Group issues disciplinary actions all the time and his was nothing out of the ordinary. Vatic is a word meaning something that describes or predicts what will happen in the future.
About two months after the CME Group rule violations that Chiu was later punished for, DiSomma, Gurinas and Schrecengost met with then-chairman of the CFTC, Gary Gensler. They discussed the definition of spoofing — or illegally canceling bids and offers quickly after placing them in order to create a false impression of demand — as well as high-frequency trading and the May 6, 2010, market plunge known as the flash crash, according to themarket regulator’s website. The meeting was part of the regulator’s efforts to implement new market rules stemming from the Dodd-Frank Act.

As for his old firm, Chiu hewed to the company line.
“I’m not allowed to talk about my time at Jump,” he said.
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The Bilderberg 2016 Agenda: Trump, Riots, Migrants, Brexit

Elite E Services
Every year, the world’s richest and most powerful business executives, bankers, media heads and politicians sit down in some luxurious and heavily guarded venue, and discuss how to shape the world in a way that maximizes profits for all involved, while perpetuating a status quo that has been highly beneficial for a select few, even if it means the ongoing destruction of the middle class. We are talking, of course, about the annual, and always secretive, Bilderberg meeting.
And, as the Guardian notes, “you know Bilderberg’s about to begin when you start seeing the guns.”

Workers erect a barricade outside the Taschenbergpalais hotel in Dresden
The Taschenbergpalais hotel in Dresden – the venue of “Bilderberg 2016” which starts tomorrow and continues until June 12 – is filling up with pistol-packing plainclothes security as the last guests are ushered out. The frowning gunslingers head up and down the corridors with their hotel maps, trying door handles and checking the lay of the land while, down in the hotel lobby, corporate goons gather in muttering huddles.
A glimpse at what is about to unfold: according to the local newspaper DNN, at least 400 police officers will be surrounding the venue for the three days of the talks. There’s already a ring of concrete blocks around the entrance.
Is that not enough? What are they expecting? The charge of the light brigade?
The hotel is being trussed up tighter than Reid Hoffman’s trousers. No one gets in or out without the right lanyard. As Ed Balls remembers only too well, from that awkward business in Copenhagen. Inside the security cordon, the final nervy tweaks are being made by conference staff. They’ve got to make sure Henry Kissinger’s curtains don’t let any light in. A single ray could be fatal.
Year after year, a sizeable number of extremely rich and powerful workaholics seem to think it’s worth strapping on their Bilderberg lanyard. But why? What’s getting the head of Google, two prime ministers, a vice-president of the European commission and the chairman of HSBC together in the same hotel basement for the same three days in June?  On its official website, Bilderberg attempts an answer. It describes itself as “a forum for informal discussions” that are “designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America”. Dialogue which is designed to foster dialogue. Talk for talk’s sake.
Of course, as Charlie Skelton notes, that’s nonsense. And yet Bilderberg insists “there is no desired outcome”. That’s like a Club 18-30 rep saying there’s no desired outcome of his tequila groin-slurping contest. Someone’s getting something out of the event. Even if that something is chlamydia.

Taschenbergpalais hotel in Dresden
What is really discussed is how to take the existing trends in the world, some favorable, some undesired, and mold them in such a way as to create even more wealth for the world’s 0.01%, while perpetutating the existing system, one which even the IMF agrees is no longer working.
This time, as Paul Joseph Watson infers, the secretive Bilderberg Group whose Steering Committee Advisory Group consists of one David Rockefeller, will discuss how to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president, the possibility of mass riots as a result of wealth inequality, the migrant crisis, as well as the United Kingdom’s vote on leaving the European Union.
As noted above, the official list of “key topics” to be discussed is both broad quite vague and includes:
  1. Current events
  2. China
  3. Europe: migration, growth, reform, vision, unity
  4. Middle East
  5. Russia
  6. US political landscape, economy: growth, debt, reform
  7. Cyber security
  8. Geo-politics of energy and commodity prices
  9. Precariat and middle class
  10. Technological innovation
That’s just for public consumption. After all, who needs massive concrete blocks and 400 police officers for protection to discuss “technological innovation” – better yet, just open up the session to the press and public.
Of course, that won’t happen, because the real agenda must remain under wraps. However one can infer from the agenda and some of the names on the participant list what the group will be discussing in more detail. As PJW writes, the attendance of anti-Trump Senator Lindsey Graham is an obvious sign that Donald Trump will be a prominent topic of discussion at this year’s Bilderberg meeting, with the likely focus on how to prevent Trump from defeating Bilderberg’s chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton, who has already raked in tens of millions in fees from “speaking” before numerous participants at the meeting that begins tomorrow.
In 2015, the Bilderberg elite was confident that Clinton could shake off her GOP challengers, but Trump’s self-funded campaign and his public opposition to globalism and internationalist trade deals like NAFTA has shocked the Bilderberg elitists. As a result, it will now have to spend much more time dealing with the damage control.
Brexit will be another major topic. With the British referendum vote to leave the EU taking place in just two weeks, and withDavid Cameron getting concerned, a vote to secede threatens the future of the European Union federal superstate that was the brainchild of Bilderberg in the first place.
The inclusion of “precariat and middle class” on the list also means that the powerful lobby group will be ruminating on how they can exploit and manage the inevitability of more riots and civil unrest in the west – and increasingly, the east with an emphasis on China whose government is terrified about the prospect of rising social unrest – a topic that elitists were also concerned about at the 2015 Davos Economic Summit. “Precariat” describes those who are struggling to survive in today’s economy and who have no long term wage security. Studies have shown that wealth inequality increases the likelihood of mass social disorder. Furthermore, as the Fed itself admitted recently, it is the Fed, by way of manipulating markets higher, that has been an instrumental catalyst behind record wealth inequality.
The flooding of Europe with third world migrants, a process which has driven European voters into the arms of nationalist parties that typically oppose Bilderberg’s wider agenda, will also be a key topic of discussion, as per bullet point 3.
As Watson observes, aone interesting name that pops up on this year’s list is that of Richard Engel, NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent.  “Normally, a semi-secret meeting of over 100 of the most powerful people on the planet would be a monumental news scoop, but don’t expect Engel to utter a word.” After all, real journalists are not allowed anywhere on the premises; Engel likely has to sign an NDA.
Indeed, Bilderberg operates under Chatham House Rules, which means that none of the participants are able to reveal any comments made during the conference. As the Guardian floridly puts it, “after the politicians drag their drained and bloodless bodies back to their respective parliaments, they don’t say a word about what happened. They act like abuse victims. “It’s just our little secret,” murmurs Kissinger as he pops the politicians back in their limos. “Chatham House rules. You remember? Yes, of course you do. Now off you go.” And he nimbly licks a heart shape on to the car window with his black tongue before it speeds off.”
Although it was reported in the German media that German Chancellor Angela Merkel would attend this year’s conference, her name does not appear on the list. However, it is a common practice for Bilderberg to omit names from the official list if the individual’s attendance is politically sensitive.
* * *
So what do the politicians and public officials get from the deal? For the more ruthless, it’s a chance to line up future employment. As the Guardian reminds us of the then head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, networking with the chairman of BP on a Copenhagen patio in 2014. A year later he was sitting on the oil firm’s board of directors.
For those who don’t use the event as a glorified LinkedIn mixed for billionaires, the motive is far simpler: make even more money. In this regard the Guardian’s amusing conclusion is spot on:
Tony Blair admitted he found the 1993 conference “useful”. And I’m sure it was. It’s useful to know in what direction in the world is being led by the people that own it, so you can trot along in the right direction. And if you learn to play the game, to fit in with the in crowd, then maybe, like Blair, you can end up with a cushy job with US investment bank JP Morgan.
Ultimately, what is decided will never see the light of day, or rather it won’t over the next 4 days. Instead it will emerge as official policy, fiscal but mostly monetary as central bankers live to serve the Bilderberg elite, laws, regulations, and social norms. And if history is any indicator, it will only make the current global situation even worse.
* *  *
CHAIRMAN
  • Castries, Henri de (FRA), Chairman and CEO, AXA Group
  • Aboutaleb, Ahmed (NLD), Mayor, City of Rotterdam
  • Achleitner, Paul M. (DEU), Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank AG
  • Agius, Marcus (GBR), Chairman, PA Consulting Group
  • Ahrenkiel, Thomas (DNK), Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence
  • Albuquerque, Maria Luís (PRT), Former Minister of Finance; MP, Social Democratic Party
  • Alierta, César (ESP), Executive Chairman and CEO, Telefónica
  • Altman, Roger C. (USA), Executive Chairman, Evercore
  • Altman, Sam (USA), President, Y Combinator
  • Andersson, Magdalena (SWE), Minister of Finance
  • Applebaum, Anne (USA), Columnist Washington Post; Director of the Transitions Forum, Legatum Institute
  • Apunen, Matti (FIN), Director, Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA
  • Aydin-Düzgit, Senem (TUR), Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair, Istanbul Bilgi University
  • Barbizet, Patricia (FRA), CEO, Artemis
  • Barroso, José M. Durão (PRT), Former President of the European Commission
  • Baverez, Nicolas (FRA), Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
  • Bengio, Yoshua (CAN), Professor in Computer Science and Operations Research, University of Montreal
  • Benko, René (AUT), Founder and Chairman of the Advisory Board, SIGNA Holding GmbH
  • Bernabè, Franco (ITA), Chairman, CartaSi S.p.A.
  • Beurden, Ben van (NLD), CEO, Royal Dutch Shell plc
  • Blanchard, Olivier (FRA), Fred Bergsten Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute
  • Botín, Ana P. (ESP), Executive Chairman, Banco Santander
  • Brandtzæg, Svein Richard (NOR), President and CEO, Norsk Hydro ASA
  • Breedlove, Philip M. (INT), Former Supreme Allied Commander Europe
  • Brende, Børge (NOR), Minister of Foreign Affairs
  • Burns, William J. (USA), President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
  • Cebrián, Juan Luis (ESP), Executive Chairman, PRISA and El País
  • Charpentier, Emmanuelle (FRA), Director, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology
  • Coeuré, Benoît (INT), Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank
  • Costamagna, Claudio (ITA), Chairman, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti S.p.A.
  • Cote, David M. (USA), Chairman and CEO, Honeywell
  • Cryan, John (DEU), CEO, Deutsche Bank AG
  • Dassù, Marta (ITA), Senior Director, European Affairs, Aspen Institute
  • Dijksma, Sharon A.M. (NLD), Minister for the Environment
  • Döpfner, Mathias (DEU), CEO, Axel Springer SE
  • Dyvig, Christian (DNK), Chairman, Kompan
  • Ebeling, Thomas (DEU), CEO, ProSiebenSat.1
  • Elkann, John (ITA), Chairman and CEO, EXOR; Chairman, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles
  • Enders, Thomas (DEU), CEO, Airbus Group
  • Engel, Richard (USA), Chief Foreign Correspondent, NBC News
  • Fabius, Laurent (FRA), President, Constitutional Council
  • Federspiel, Ulrik (DNK), Group Executive, Haldor Topsøe A/S
  • Ferguson, Jr., Roger W. (USA), President and CEO, TIAA
  • Ferguson, Niall (USA), Professor of History, Harvard University
  • Flint, Douglas J. (GBR), Group Chairman, HSBC Holdings plc
  • Garicano, Luis (ESP), Professor of Economics, LSE; Senior Advisor to Ciudadanos
  • Georgieva, Kristalina (INT), Vice President, European Commission
  • Gernelle, Etienne (FRA), Editorial Director, Le Point
  • Gomes da Silva, Carlos (PRT), Vice Chairman and CEO, Galp Energia
  • Goodman, Helen (GBR), MP, Labour Party
  • Goulard, Sylvie (INT), Member of the European Parliament
  • Graham, Lindsey (USA), Senator
  • Grillo, Ulrich (DEU), Chairman, Grillo-Werke AG; President, Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie
  • Gruber, Lilli (ITA), Editor-in-Chief and Anchor “Otto e mezzo”, La7 TV
  • Hadfield, Chris (CAN), Colonel, Astronaut
  • Halberstadt, Victor (NLD), Professor of Economics, Leiden University
  • Harding, Dido (GBR), CEO, TalkTalk Telecom Group plc
  • Hassabis, Demis (GBR), Co-Founder and CEO, DeepMind
  • Hobson, Mellody (USA), President, Ariel Investment, LLC
  • Hoffman, Reid (USA), Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, LinkedIn
  • Höttges, Timotheus (DEU), CEO, Deutsche Telekom AG
  • Jacobs, Kenneth M. (USA), Chairman and CEO, Lazard
  • Jäkel, Julia (DEU), CEO, Gruner + Jahr
  • Johnson, James A. (USA), Chairman, Johnson Capital Partners
  • Jonsson, Conni (SWE), Founder and Chairman, EQT
  • Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. (USA), Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
  • Kaeser, Joe (DEU), President and CEO, Siemens AG
  • Karp, Alex (USA), CEO, Palantir Technologies
  • Kengeter, Carsten (DEU), CEO, Deutsche Börse AG
  • Kerr, John (GBR), Deputy Chairman, Scottish Power
  • Kherbache, Yasmine (BEL), MP, Flemish Parliament
  • Kissinger, Henry A. (USA), Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
  • Kleinfeld, Klaus (USA), Chairman and CEO, Alcoa
  • Kravis, Henry R. (USA), Co-Chairman and Co-CEO, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
  • Kravis, Marie-Josée (USA), Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
  • Kudelski, André (CHE), Chairman and CEO, Kudelski Group
  • Lagarde, Christine (INT), Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
  • Levin, Richard (USA), CEO, Coursera
  • Leyen, Ursula von der (DEU), Minister of Defence
  • Leysen, Thomas (BEL), Chairman, KBC Group
  • Logothetis, George (GRC), Chairman and CEO, Libra Group
  • Maizière, Thomas de (DEU), Minister of the Interior, Federal Ministry of the Interior
  • Makan, Divesh (USA), CEO, ICONIQ Capital
  • Malcomson, Scott (USA), Author; President, Monere Ltd.
  • Markwalder, Christa (CHE), President of the National Council and the Federal Assembly
  • McArdle, Megan (USA), Columnist, Bloomberg View
  • Michel, Charles (BEL), Prime Minister
  • Micklethwait, John (USA), Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg LP
  • Minton Beddoes, Zanny (GBR), Editor-in-Chief, The Economist
  • Mitsotakis, Kyriakos (GRC), President, New Democracy Party
  • Morneau, Bill (CAN), Minister of Finance
  • Mundie, Craig J. (USA), Principal, Mundie & Associates
  • Murray, Charles A. (USA), W.H. Brady Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
  • Netherlands, H.M. the King of the (NLD)
  • Noonan, Michael (IRL), Minister for Finance
  • Noonan, Peggy (USA), Author, Columnist, The Wall Street Journal
  • O’Leary, Michael (IRL), CEO, Ryanair Plc
  • Ollongren, Kajsa (NLD), Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam
  • Özel, Soli (TUR), Professor, Kadir Has University
  • Papalexopoulos, Dimitri (GRC), CEO, Titan Cement Co.
  • Petraeus, David H. (USA), Chairman, KKR Global Institute
  • Philippe, Edouard (FRA), Mayor of Le Havre
  • Pind, Søren (DNK), Minister of Justice
  • Ratti, Carlo (ITA), Director, MIT Senseable City Lab
  • Reisman, Heather M. (CAN), Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc.
  • Rutte, Mark (NLD), Prime Minister
  • Sawers, John (GBR), Chairman and Partner, Macro Advisory Partners
  • Schäuble, Wolfgang (DEU), Minister of Finance
  • Schieder, Andreas (AUT), Chairman, Social Democratic Group
  • Schmidt, Eric E. (USA), Executive Chairman, Alphabet Inc.
  • Scholten, Rudolf (AUT), CEO, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG
  • Schwab, Klaus (INT), Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum
  • Sikorski, Radoslaw (POL), Senior Fellow, Harvard University; Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
  • Simsek, Mehmet (TUR), Deputy Prime Minister
  • Sinn, Hans-Werner (DEU), Professor for Economics and Public Finance, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
  • Skogen Lund, Kristin (NOR), Director General, The Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise
  • Standing, Guy (GBR), Co-President, BIEN; Research Professor, University of London
  • Svanberg, Carl-Henric (SWE), Chairman, BP plc and AB Volvo
  • Thiel, Peter A. (USA), President, Thiel Capital
  • Tillich, Stanislaw (DEU), Minister-President of Saxony
  • Vetterli, Martin (CHE), President, NSF
  • Wahlroos, Björn (FIN), Chairman, Sampo Group, Nordea Bank, UPM-Kymmene Corporation
  • Wallenberg, Jacob (SWE), Chairman, Investor AB
  • Weder di Mauro, Beatrice (CHE), Professor of Economics, University of Mainz
  • Wolf, Martin H. (GBR), Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times
* * *
Finally, for those who are skeptical about the massive power and reach of the relatively small Bilderberg group, here is a recent graph which shows the members’ connections to virtually every important and relevant organization, company and political entity in the world.
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Saudi Authorities Panic – Ban Speculation On Riyal Devaluation Amid Banking Crisis

Elite E Services
With Saudi Riyal forwards plunging back above 3.81, dramatically weaker than the current peg, Bloomberg reports that Saudi authorities are cracking down on currency traders as speculation mounts that the world’s biggest oil exporter won’t be able to maintain the riyal’s peg to the dollar as revenue plunges.
Saudi Arabia ordered banks in the kingdom to stop selling some products that allow speculators to bet against its currency peg just days after demanding information from lenders on the offerings, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
he Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency sent a circular to banks this week saying that dollar-riyal forward structured contracts are banned with immediate effect, said the people, asking not to be identified because they are not authorized to comment publicly. Forward foreign-currency transactions backed by actual goods and services will still be allowed, the people said.
The regulator, also known as SAMA, has asked lenders for details on derivative deals dating to January, saying they hadn’t informed the central bank about some products. An e-mailed request for comment to the agency outside of normal office hours on Friday wasn’t immediately returned.
“The directive shows the continuing disconnect between the Saudi foreign-exchange policy and market expectations,”Raza Agha, VTB Capital’s chief economist for the Middle East and Africa, said by e-mail. “SAMA appears committed to the exchange-rate peg despite the cost to foreign-exchange reserves, large fiscal deficits and consensus forecasts that see only a very gradual rise in oil prices.”
SAMA ordered banks to stop selling options contracts on riyal forwards at a meeting in Riyadh on Jan 18., people with knowledge of the matter said at the time, which explains the surge in the chart at that time, but it appears funds have found another vehicle to implement their bets.
It makes sense, since as Bawerk.net’s Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk explains, the Saudis have two tough choices:
1) maintain the peg, control price inflation through continued deflation of the money supply and get a full-blown banking crisis; or
2) alternatively, reflate the money supply, increase speculation in riyal forwards, devalue and get massive price inflation through the extremely important import channel.
During the reign of the mighty petro-dollar standard, it was necessary for major oil exporters to recycle their dollar holdings back into the dollar-based financial system to maintain their self-imposed exchange rate pegs. US government bonds are the very centrepiece of this elaborate system and it is thus no surprise to see the dollar price correlate well with overall OPEC TSY holdings. In other words, when oil prices were high, oil exporters amassed a capital surplus that were channelled into, among other things, US treasury bonds. When oil prices fell, oil exporters had to liquidate TSY holdings to cover capital shortfalls.
 Oil Price vs OPEC TSY Holdings
It is interesting to note that the more money and credit issued in the US the more foreign goods could be purchased by Americans and by extension the more foreign demand for US TSYs rose. The savings glut proposed by Bernanke was, and still is, nothing more than exported dollar inflation. There were no savings glut, but rather an indirect form of QE long before QE became an official policy. Home equity withdrawal lines through commercial banks, based on phony asset appreciation promoted by an accommodative Federal Reserve policy stance, increased Americans purchasing power, which inevitably leaked into global markets. Growing financial imbalances were exacerbated by the fact that there were no functioning pricing mechanisms to correct these flows.
With dollars flowing into oil exporting countries it would be natural for the recipient exchange rate to appreciate whilst the dollar depreciate. However, many oil exporters have pegged their exchange rate to the dollar so no such effect took place. Instead, local monetary authorities bought up dollars by inflating their own local currency to maintain the pre-set price. As the chart below shows, in a fixed exchange rate system pegged to a freely floating, and thus rapidly inflating and deflating, currency the LCU will have to inflate and deflate accordingly. With no price effect to soften the impact, any change in demand will be borne by supply. Compared to a flexible exchange rate regime, the inflation and deflation of the LCU will have to be larger with a fixed price of the LCU in relation to the dollar.
    Fixed and flexible FX regime
In the boom time it is easy to adjust as the monetary authorities can inflate the LCU to buy up dollars and create the consequent phony boom in the domestic economy. Local businesses thrive, credit is plentiful and asset prices rises. Very few complain.
However, as the dollar deflation takes hold the very opposite effect must by necessity occur. To maintain the exchange rate peg monetary authorities must buy up LCU through sales of previously accumulated dollars.
The key metric to watch for dollar dependent economies with exchange rate pegs is the value of domestic money supply (at the fixed dollar price) relative to FX reserves. If domestic claim to dollars, id est money supply, exceed FX reserves it is highly likely that the monetary authorities will be forced to devalue in order to realign the two metrics. If we look at an economy like Saudi Arabia, where there have been a lot of talk about devaluation, we find that there are more than enough FX reserves to cover the outstanding money supply. Since there will be no positive effect from a devaluation, there are no immediate devaluation threat.
SA FX vs M2
However, at current trends the FX reserves will drop below M2 by late 2017 or early 2018. Current trends does not lead to very pleasant outcomes for the Saudi economy because the domestic money supply is and will continue to deflate. This will expose internal malinvestements, which will show up as increasing NPLs in the banking sector, which in turn will lead to further deflation.
It is thus tempting for the Saudi government to reflate their economy by pushing more Riyals into the system; but this runs the risk of exacerbating the possibility of devaluation as the money supply will soon exceed falling FX reserves.
As most of the rest of the world, also the Saudis have become path dependent; 1) maintain the peg, control price inflation through continued deflation of the money supply and get a full-blown banking crisis; or 2) alternatively, reflate the money supply, increase speculation in riyal forwards, devalue and get massive price inflation through the extremely important import channel.
This obviously begs the question; at what oil price can the Saudi’s mange to muddle through without ending up in either 1 nor 2.  At today’s price of around USD50 / bbl Saudi Arabia will burn through USD90bn worth of reserves per year.Change in FX reserves vs oil price
This means under a mild deflationary scenario FX reserves will fall below M2 already by early 2018; even with a 10 per cent cost reduction. At 60 dollar and only 2 per cent reduction in cost Saudi Arabia will probably not have to worry about severing the peg. FX vs M2 under different scnearios
Unless prices continue upwards, it will be interesting see what route, and which risks, the Saudi government is willing to take on.For now it appear route 1 is the preferred one, but as the banking crisis escalates we expect a gradual movement toward route 2. Unless oil prices spikes back to USD60 /bbl plus, and save the day. We doubt it!
*  *  *
Finally, given the ban on FX products – and the seemingly inevitable de-pegging discussed above – one potential way to play the devaluation is via CDS…
In fact, as the FX ban comes into play, it’s clear CDS is starting to become more active and more indicative of Saudi stress that forwards.
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EES: FX Liquidity 3.3 released

Elite E Services

Elite E Services has released Liquidity version 3.3 – in this version, we’ve included an optional trailing stop on all orders.  See Liquidity on the MQL Marketplace

Checkout the parameters:

  • BuyOrSell = B (default) or S – Buy or Sell. This parameter defines if the system is in buy mode, or sell mode. If set to “B” the system will only Buy. If set to “S” the system will only sell. To use liquidity in grid fashion – load the EA on 2 charts – set one to “B” and the other to “S”
  • GridLevel = Ladder – This is the level, in pips, the system will place a buy or sell order. Default is set to 5.
  • Lots = Lots – Number of lots for each order. (static value)
  • TakeProfit = Take Profit – Take profit for each order. (static value)
  • UseTrailing = Use Trailing? Yes or No. Default is No. This means a trailing stop will be placed on each individual trade.
  • TrailingStop = Trailing Stop (10) Default is 10. Only applicable if UT is set to Yes. If UT is Yes, place a TP and Trailing stop on all new orders.
  • UseGPoint = Use G? Yes or No. Default is Yes. If No, do not utilize the below parameter, and subsequent functions.
  • G = Point at which system reset and reverse. Default is 0 – meaning whatever price the system is loaded at, will always be the price where system reverse. In the chart example, once the price reach the original price, the system will go into buy again mode. If G value is 10 (in pips), then add 10 pips to the price when system will reverse from buy mode to sell mode. (number of legs before reverse)
  • F = Pips to go into the reverse trade. Default is 5, should be same default as ladder. (To count the number of legs to wait to enter, multiply by the ladder value, i.e. 2 legs, if ladder is 5, this value should be 10.)
  • P = Account protection, in % equity from peak. Default is 10 (which is 10% peak to valley, for this EA only NOT the entire account). This means if the peak to valley draw-down is 10%, close all positions, and display the message “Account Protection Hit – Restart to resume trading”
  • CloseAll = Close All – Default is “No” – If set to Yes, EA will close All trades for this EA only, and stop trading.


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“An Unusual Number Of Known Unknowns” – These Are The Key Event Risks In June

Elite E Services
One of the recurring concerns voiced by Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett is that with May now in the rearview mirror, we are entering “the event risk month” of June (incidentally,over the weekend, the credit strategist presented several ideas how to trade said event risk, either bullish or bearish). Now it is UBS’ turn to reiterate the warning that June may see a spike in volatility due to “an unusual number of known unknowns.”
According to UBS, in June there will be “an unusual number of known unknowns from several sources. June 2016 is a month in which the number of event risks is particularly high. In our baseline scenarios we do not see market upsets, but the potential is there: Japanese fiscal policy; meetings of the ECB, Fed and BoJ; new ECB policy implementation; a German Constitutional Court ruling; the UK referendum; elections in Spain; and a decision on the FTT are all thrown into the mix.”
Here is the full breakdown, first in table format.
And then the chronological narrative:
1 June: Closing day of the Japanese Diet – new fiscal action?
We expect Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to announce new fiscal policy on 1 June – the closing day of the current session of the Japanese Diet. We think that the scheduled rise in the consumption tax will be delayed and a supplementary budget of ¥5-10tn could be announced. It is also possible that the Lower House is dissolved and new elections called.
2 June-16 June: Central bank meetings
On balance, we do not expect any change in monetary policy to be announced by the ECB, the Federal Reserve or the BoJ in June, but statements and guidance will be watched closely.
First up is the ECB on 2 June. The ECB will present its new staff forecasts at the press conference. We think the key challenge for Mr Draghi will be to not appear too hawkish amid rising oil prices and robust Eurozone Q1 GDP growth, and we believe it too early for the ECB to send strong signals about the duration of QE beyond March of next year. But much will be discussed.
After that, the FOMC will meet on 15 June. We think that it will wait until September before it next raises rates (in part because of upcoming event risk). However, the minutes of the April meeting and recent Fed rhetoric has kept this meeting “live” and expectations higher than they might otherwise have been.
We don’t think that the BoJ will announce a further easing on 16 June, but it will be a close call. We see a 40% chance that it does, and a 60% chance that this takes place by July. If conducted in combination with a fiscal expansion (see above), Japan would in effect be conducting a policy of ‘helicopter money’ and we would expect the polemic to increase in global markets on this subject
6-10 June / 24 June: TLTROs, and other ECB policy implementation
While we do not expect new ECB policy to be announced at the June meeting (see above), June is the month in which some already-announced policies are implemented for the first time. The first auction of the new Targeted Long-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO II) will take place on 23 June, with the publication of the results on 24 June. Market focus has been on the ability of banks to borrow 4-year money at an interest rate (to be set by ex-post calculations) as low as the current deposit rate of -0.40%.
However, we think that more important will be the first voluntary repayment of TLTRO I to be announced at 11.00am London time / 12.00pm CET on 10 June. (The repayment itself will take place on 29 June, coinciding with the first settlement date of TLTRO I). It is likely that the bank repayment of  LTRO I will be larger than the take-up of TLTRO II – and result in the first significant reduction of the ECB’s balance sheet since QE began in March of last year. In turn, this might appear as an involuntary tightening of monetary policy.
The reason this might happen is that one of the effects of QE has been a largescale creation of deposits in euro area banks. But TLTRO I took place before QE was announced and banks have been unable to repay it until now. Many of them – particularly in core countries – have been burdened with large excess liquidity as a result. In turn, this has meant a drag on Net Interest Margins (NIM) for these banks as risk free rates have been negative while they are (by and large) paying 0% to depositors.
Also in June, we expect the Eurosystem to begin its purchases of corporate bonds in its Corporate Sector Purchase Programme (CSPP). It is likely that this will begin in the days shortly after the ECB’s press conference on 2 June. The corporate bond market will be watching the implementation of purchases on a daily basis. We believe that once the CSPP settles in, the Eurosystem will be buying around €12bn a month in corporate bonds. Last Wednesday Reuters reported that – citing “several bank sources” – these will amount to €5-10bn per month initially.
21 June: German Constitutional Court ruling on OMTs
On 21 June, the German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe will give its final ruling on the acceptability of the ECB’s Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs) programme in the field of German law. In our view, this represents less of an immediate market risk than a contingent one. In a scenario where the Court ruled against OMTs, uncertainty might increase over the ability of the ECB to respond to another period of extreme volatility in European sovereign markets
Some appear to think that a ruling against OMTs might impede the purchase of peripheral bonds in the ECB’s current QE programme. We believe this to be unlikely. Bundesbank opposition to QE as a monetary policy tool in principle (even if not in timing) seems slight.
It is widely accepted that the announcement of OMTs in the summer of 2012 was the beginning of the end of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. But in October 2014, the German Constitutional Court found that the policy was “incompatible with primary law”. At the same time, the judges in Karlsruhe passed it on to the European Court of Justice for review, which last year came to the opposite conclusion (though in the context of European law).
24 June: Result of the UK referendum on EU membership
The recent rally in sterling and the tightening of peripheral sovereign spreads have been widely attributed in the media to an increase in confidence that the UK referendum will result in a vote to remain. If correct, this would mean that there would be potential for sterling to fall and peripheral spreads to widen once more in a scenario where there is either a vote to leave or if opinion polls showed increased support for that outcome.
Figure 3: Average Italy and Spain 10-year spread to Germany and EURGBP; past 6 months
26 June: Elections in Spain
Spain will hold another general election on 26 June, after its 21 December 2015 election resulted in no government being formed. In general, we think that Spanish yield spreads to Germany should tighten over the coming months as the relatively strong growth heals the economy and improves debt dynamics.
However, Spain missed on its deficit targets in 2015 by a wide margin and is likely to miss again this year, according to the European Commission. In part, this can be attributed to the dominance of elections in the public calendar. But there is a risk to sovereign spreads if a government is formed after the elections which might take an anti-austerity stance and widen the public deficit even more.
30 June: A decision on the European Financial Transaction Tax
A group of European governments have been proposing a European Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) for several years. In the most recent statement, the proponent governments indicated that “taxation should be based on the principle of the widest possible base and low rates and it should not impact the cost of sovereign borrowing”.
The statement also directs governments to decide on further details – including, importantly, the levels of the tax – by the end of June: “in order to prepare the next step, experts in close coordination with the commission should elaborate adequate tax rates for the different variants. A decision on these open issues should be made until the end of June 2016.”
It should be noted, however, that aside from the 10 countries currently promoting the tax there is opposition among other EU member states, most notably the UK. Under the “Enhanced Cooperation” framework, the countries will pursue the policy only if 9 or more member states support it. In December, Estonia withdrew its support for the project.
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WSJ: A First Look at America’s Supergun

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DAHLGREN, Va.—A warning siren bellowed through the concrete bunker of a top-secret Naval facility where U.S. military engineers prepared to demonstrate a weapon for which there is little defense.
Officials huddled at a video screen for a first look at a deadly new supergun that can fire a 25-pound projectile through seven steel plates and leave a 5-inch hole.
The weapon is called a railgun and requires neither gunpowder nor explosive. It is powered by electromagnetic rails that accelerate a hardened projectile to staggering velocity—a battlefield meteorite with the power to one day transform military strategy, say supporters, and keep the U.S. ahead of advancing Russian and Chinese weaponry.
In conventional guns, a bullet loses velocity from the moment the gunpowder ignites and sends it flying. The railgun projectile instead gains speed as it travels the length of a 32-foot barrel, exiting the muzzle at 4,500 miles an hour, or more than a mile a second.
“This is going to change the way we fight,” said U.S. Navy Adm. Mat Winter, the head of the Office of Naval Research.
Watch the Video: Pentagon officials believe the high-tech railgun could pave the way for a military advantage defending assets on sea and on land. Photo: U.S. Department of Defense
The Navy developed the railgun as a potent offensive weapon to blow holes in enemy ships, destroy tanks and level terrorist camps. The weapon system has the attention of top Pentagon officials also interested in its potential to knock enemy missiles out of the sky more inexpensively and in greater numbers than current missile-defense systems—perhaps within a decade.
The future challenge for the U.S. military, in broad terms, is maintaining a global reach with declining numbers of Navy ships and land forces. Growing expenses and fixed budgets make it more difficult to maintain large forces in the right places to deter aggression.
“I can’t conceive of a future where we would replicate Cold War forces in Europe,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, one of the weapon’s chief boosters. “But I could conceive of a set of railguns that would be inexpensive but would have enormous deterrent value. They would have value against airplanes, missiles, tanks, almost anything.”
Inside the test bunker at Dahlgren, military officials turned to the video monitor showing the rectangular railgun barrel. Engineer Tom Boucher, program manager for the railgun in the Office of Naval Research, explained: “We are watching the system charge. We are taking power from the grid.”
Wires splay out the back of the railgun, which requires a power plant that generates 25 megawatts—enough electricity to power 18,750 homes.
The siren blared again, and the weapon fired. The video replay was slowed so officials could see aluminum shavings ignite in a fireball and the projectile emerge from its protective shell.
“This,” Mr. Boucher said, “is a thing of beauty going off.”
The railgun faces many technical barriers before it is battle ready. Policy makers also must weigh geopolitical questions. China and Russia see the railgun and other advances in U.S. missile defense as upending the world’s balance of power because it negates their own missile arsenals.
The railgun’s prospective military advantage has made the developing technology a priority of hackers in China and Russia, officials said.
Chinese hackers in particular have tried to penetrate the computer systems of the Pentagon and its defense contractors to probe railgun secrets, U.S. defense officials said. Pentagon officials declined to discuss the matter further.
The Navy began working on the railgun a decade ago and has spent more than half a billion dollars. The Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities office is investing another $800 million—the largest share for any project—to develop the weapon’s defensive ability, as well as to adapt existing guns to fire the railgun’s high-tech projectiles.

Railgun Components

Power
A 25 megawatt power plant and large capacitor bank are required to provide enough pulse power to fire the weapon 10 times a minute.
Electromagnetic railgun
32 feet
Projectile
A non-explosive bullet filled with tungsten pellets; weight: approx. 25 pounds.
Shoe
An aluminum jacket that supports the bullet in the gun barrel; also provides a bridge for the current between the rails.
Approx. 24 inches
Source: Office of Naval Research
Some officials expressed concern the technology has commanded too large a portion of resources and focus. “This better work,” one defense official said.
The age of the gun faded after World War II, hampered by the limited range and accuracy of gunpowder weapons. Missiles and jet fighters dominated the Cold War years, prompting the Navy to retire its big-gun battleships. The railgun—and its newly developed projectiles—could launch a new generation of the vessels.
“Part of the reason we moved away from big guns is the chemistry and the physics of getting the range,” said Jerry DeMuro, the chief executive of BAE Systems, a railgun developer. “The railgun can create the kind of massive effect you want without chemistry.”
The Navy’s current 6-inch guns have a range of 15 miles. The 16-inch guns of mothballed World War II-era battleships could fire a distance of 24 miles and penetrate 30 feet of concrete. In contrast, the railgun has a range of 125 miles, officials said, and five times the impact.
“Anytime you have a projectile screaming in at extremely high speeds—kilometers per second—the sheer kinetic energy of that projectile is awesome,” Mr. Work said. “There are not a lot of things that can stop it.”
Star Wars sequel
Railguns have for years been limited to laboratories and videogames.
Former President Ronald Reagan ’s Strategic Defense Initiative—the so-called Star Wars missile defense—at one time envisioned using the railgun to shoot down nuclear missiles. Those plans were stalled by 1980s technology. One problem was that the gun barrel and electromagnetic rails had to be replaced after a single shot.
The Navy now believes it has a design that soon will be able to fire 10 times a minute through a barrel capable of lasting 1,000 rounds.
Besides speed, the railgun also has a capacity advantage. A typical U.S. Navy destroyer can carry as many as 96 missiles—either offensive cruise missiles or defensive interceptors. A ship armed with a railgun could potentially carry a thousand rounds, allowing the vessel to shoot incoming missiles or attack enemy forces for longer periods and at a faster rate of fire.
Unlike the Reagan-era initiative, the Pentagon doesn’t see the railgun as a shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles but defense against shorter-range conventional missiles.
The U.S. has kept its military dominance over the past quarter-century largely through such precision weaponry as guided missiles and munitions. It also has spent billions of dollars on interceptor-missile based defense systems to shoot down ballistic missiles fired at the U.S. or its allies.
That monopoly is about over. China is perfecting a ship-killing ballistic missile. Russia mostly impressed U.S. military planners with the power and precision of its cruise missiles deployed in Syria, and its improved artillery precision revealed in Ukraine.
“I am very worried about the U.S. conventional advantage. The loss of that advantage is terribly destabilizing,” said Elbridge Colby, a military analyst with the Center of a New American Security.
Defense planners believe the U.S. needs new military advances. Russia, for example, is believed to be developing longer-range surface-to-air missiles and new electronic warfare technology to blunt any forces near its borders.
Prospects for an armed conflict among the great powers still seem remote. But for the first time since the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon is again looking closely at responses to rising tensions with China and Russia.
Military planners say the railgun would be useful if the U.S. had to defend the Baltic states against Russia, or support an ally against China in the South China Sea.
Moscow and Beijing are investing in missile systems aimed at keeping the U.S. out of those respective regions. A railgun-based missile defense could defend naval forces or ground troops, making it easier to move U.S. reinforcements closer to the borders of Russia or China, officials said.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, right, views the hole made in a steel plate by a railgun projectile during testing last year at a top-secret Naval facility in Dahlgren, Va.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, right, views the hole made in a steel plate by a railgun projectile during testing last year at a top-secret Naval facility in Dahlgren, Va. PHOTO: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
“You can’t ignore the fact that Russia has great ability to mass conventional munitions and fire them over great range. We have to be able to fight through those salvos,” said Mr. Work, of the Pentagon. “And the railgun potentially will give us the means to do that.”
Russian officials, meanwhile, including Alexander Grushko, Moscow’s envoy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, have said technological advances by the U.S., including missile defense, could undermine the strategic stability currently guaranteed by the relative balance between the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Faster, smarter
Hitting a missile with a bullet—a technical obstacle that hampered Mr. Reagan’s initiative—remains a challenge. Railgun research leans heavily on commercial advances in supercomputing to aim and on smartphone technology to steer the railgun’s projectile using the Global Positioning System.
“Ten years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to build a projectile like this because the cellphone industry, the smartphone industry, hadn’t perfected the components,” said William Roper, the director of the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office. “It is a really smart bullet.”
Development of the railgun guidance system is about done, officials said, but circuits in the projectile must be hardened to withstand gravitational forces strong enough to turn most miniaturized electronics to scrap.
Missile defense by the railgun is at least a decade away, but Pentagon officials believe the weapon’s projectiles can be used much sooner. They are filled with tungsten pellets harder than many kinds of steel, officials said, and will likely cost between $25,000 and $50,000, a bargain compared with a $10-million interceptor missile.
The electrical energy required to fire a railgun means it is likely to be used first as a ship-mounted weapon. Only one class of Navy ship, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, has such a power plant, officials said. The Navy is building just three of those destroyers, so the Pentagon is working to adapt the projectile to use in existing Naval guns on other vessels, as well as for Army artillery.
While slower than a railgun, a powder-fired railgun projectile still flies at 2,800 miles an hour, which extends the range and power of existing weapons.
At Dalhgren last year, military engineers test-fired 5- and 6-inch Navy guns loaded with a version of the railgun projectile. The range of the Navy’s 6-inch guns was extended to 38 miles from 15 miles.
The Pentagon also tested the railgun projectile in 155mm Army howitzers, successfully extending its range.
“The Navy is on the cusp of having a tactical system, a next generation offensive weapon,” Mr. Roper said. “It could be a game changer.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-first-look-at-americas-supergun-1464359194?mod=WSJ_article_EditorsPicks_0

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