Breaking Bad
August 19, 2015·0 comments·market structure
A major trading firm got caught doing something genuinely criminal. It ranked clients by how easy they were to exploit and extracted tiny advantages across billions of shares. The scandal will likely trigger a regulatory crackdown that feels decisive. But there's a deeper flaw in how markets are structured that remains invisible, and the very act of punishing this obvious culprit may lock that flaw in place for decades.
• Front running at scale is now public and undeniable. ITG's board-approved program impacted roughly 130 billion shares, yet the company only got a $20 million fine. The punishment looks decisive. It almost certainly won't be.
• This creates the perfect distraction. Regulators can point to ITG and declare the system fixed. Media can run "crackdown" narratives. The underlying architecture that made this possible stays untouched and unremarked upon.
• The real vulnerability is algorithmic. Control over massive order books by non-human systems, largely unmonitored, represents a different kind of front running that's harder to see and harder to punish.
• Visibility breeds complacency. The clearer the visible wrongdoing, the easier it becomes to ignore what's hidden in plain sight. One villain caught satisfies the appetite for reform.
• Market infrastructure is the battleground. What happens next depends on whether advanced algorithmic systems owned by the most powerful institutions get even more unregulated access to order flow.
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