Today's price action in Chevron will come as no surprise to any reader of ZH, but maybe, just maybe, in flipping from porn site to porn site, the SEC will stumble across our earlier note on unemployment in the 'adult movie' business and will look at the following remarkable charts. As Nanex shows, with 37 seconds to the close, one of the largest market-cap firms in the entire world saw its stock price attacked by an HFT algo that oscillated it by +/-2% about twice-per-second. As Nanex exclaims, "no longer can any HFT'ers or exchange or regulator blame THIS on humans." Perhaps the odds of another black-out on NASDARK should be higher than the current 28%.
HFT Rocks Chevron
On September 6, 2013, beginning at 15:59:23, the stock of Chevron Corporation (Symbol CVX, market capitalization $234 Billion) was rocked by an HFT algorithm gone awry. No longer can the High Frequency Traders or exchange blame this on humans. This can only be the work of computers delerious from dollar signs flashing in their CPUs.
The charts below show the price of Chevron oscillating over 2% about twice per second.
1. CVX - Trades color coded by reporting exchange.
2. CVX - Bids and asks color coded by reporting exchange.
3. CVX - Trades color coded by reporting exchange. Zoom of Chart 1.
4. CVX - Trades color coded by reporting exchange. Zoom of Chart 3.
5. CVX - Trades color coded by reporting exchange. Zoom of Chart 4.
6. CVX - Best bids and offers color coded by reporting exchange.
