ON FEBRUARY 3RD 2010, at 1.26.28 pm, an automated trading system operated by a high-frequency trader (HFT) called Infinium Capital Management malfunctioned. Over the next three seconds it entered 6,767 individual orders to buy light sweet crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), which is run by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Enough of those orders were filled to send the market jolting upwards.
read more...↧